^i^ 


WAR  AND  OTHER 

ESSAYS 

BY 

WTT7:;j:,,jM  graham  SUMNER 


EDITED    WITH    INTRODUCTION 
BY 

ALBERT  GALLOWAY  KELLER 

'^'iwww^  wvi^5,'^0  i^^V^Wr^ 


NEW  HAVEN:    YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON;    HENRY  FROWDE 

OXFORD  I^NrVERSITY  PRESS 


WUliiim   Graham   Sumner 
[1895] 


WAR  AND  OTHER 

ESSAYS 


BY 


WIL^iXM  graham  SUMNER 


EDITED    WITH    INTRODUCTION 
BY 

^       ALBERT  GALLOWAY  KELLER 


,/ 


J 


NEW  HAVEN:    YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:    HENRY  FROWDE 

OXFORD   UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


\ 


\ 


COPYRIGHT,  1911, 
BY  YALE  UNI\ERSITY  PRESS 


rihST      PRINTED      OCTODEB,       1911.        1,000      COPIES 


Copyright,  1885,  by  Henry  Holt  &  Company 

Copyright,  1883,  1887,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Copyright,  1889.  1894,  1896,  1909,  by  The  Forum 

Copyright,  1896,  by  D.  Appleton  &  Company 

Copyright,  1899,  by  Yale  Law  Journal 

Copyright,  1901,  by  The  International  Monthly 

Copyright,  1909,  by  The  Yale  Re\iew 


X  '^  /  &  ix. 


I  •    •  • 


WAR  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

All  rights  on  the  essays  in  this  work  are  reserved  by 
the  holders  of  the  copyright.  The  pubhshers  named  in 
the  subjoined  list  are  the  proprietors,  either  in  their  own 
right,  or  as  agents  for  the  author  of  the  Essays  of  which 
the  titles  are  given  below,  and  of  which  the  ownership 
is  thus  specifically  noted.  The  Yale  University  Press 
makes  grateful  acknowledgment  to  the  Publishers  whose 
names  appear  below  for  their  courteous  permission  to 
include  in  the  present  work  the  Essays  of  which  they 
were  the  original  publishers. 

Yale  University  Press 

Messrs.  Henry  Holt  &  Company.  "  Sociology  "  and  *'  Our  Colleges 
before  the  Country."  (From  the  Collected  Essays  in  Political  and 
Social  Science.)  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers.  "  State  Interferen^," 
*'0n  the  Case  of  a  Certain  Man  Who  is  Never  Thought  of,"  "The 
Case  of  the  Forgotten  Man  Further  Considered"  (From  "What  the 
Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other"  ).  The  Forum.  "Do  We  Want 
Industrial  Peace.?"  "The  Absurd  Effort  to  Make  the  World  Over,"  "The 
Fallacy  of  Territorial  Extension,"  "The  Status  of  Women  in  Chaldea, 
Egypt,  India,  etc."  "Witchcraft."  D.  Appleton  &  Company. 
"The  Proposed  Dual  Organization  of  Mankind,"  Yale  Law  Joul'nal. 
"The  Conquest  of  the  United  States  by  Spain."  The  International 
Monthly.  "The  Predominant  Issue."  The  Yale  Review.  "Mores 
of  the  Present  and  Future."  The  American  Journal  of  Sociology. 
"The  Family  and  Social  Change,"  "Religion  and  the  Mores." 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction ix 

I.  War  . 3 

^       II.  The  Family  and  Social  Change 43' 

III.  The  Status  of  Woman  in  Chaldea,  Egypt,  Judea 

AND  Greece  to  the  Time  of  Christ       ....  65 

IV.  Witchcraft 105 

"^^  V.   Religion  and  the  Mores 129 

-^VI.   The  Mores   of  the  Present  and  Future      .     .     .  149 

"    VII.   Sociology 167 

VIII.  The  Absurd  Effort  to  Make  the  World  Over       .  195 

♦     IX.   State  Interference       213 

X.  Do  We  Want  Industrial  Peace.? 229 

t    XI.  On  the  Case  of  a   Certain   Man  Who  Is  Never 

Thought  of 247 

,  XII.  The  Case  of  the  Forgotten  Man  Further   Con- 
sidered    257 

XIII.  The  Proposed  Dual  Organization  of  Mankind  .     .  271 

*^XIV.   The  Fallacy  of  Territorial  Extension  ....  285 

XV.  The  Conquest  of  the  United  States  by  Spain  .      .  297 

XVI.    The  Predominant  Issue 337 

XVII.  Our  Colleges  before  the  Country 355 

Bibliography 375 


vu 


INTRODUCTION 

In  1872,  when  the  author  of  the  essays  here  assembled  was 
elected  professor  of  political  and  social  science  in  Yale  College, 
he  was,  to  use  his  own  words,  "a  young  and  untried  man." 
He  was  selected  for  his  position,  not  as  a  specialist,  but  because 
he  was  what  he  was.  Someone  in  those  days  must  have  been 
an  excellent  judge  of  men.  "I  have  tried,"  Sumner  wrote, 
in  1881,  *'to  justify  their  [the  Corporation's]  confidence, 
I  threw  myself  into  the  work  of  my  department  and  of  the 
college  with  all  my  might.  I  had  no  other  interest  or  ambition." 
He  could  have  repeated  these  words,  with  equal  truth,  at  the 
end  of  his  incumbency ;  for  the  prime  interest  in  Sumner's  pro- 
fessional career  from  his  election  to  the  day  of  his  retirement, 
in  June,  1909,  was  the  scrupulously  faithful  discharge  of  his 
academic  duties;  and  to  this  end  he  spent  freely  the  powers 
of  a  sturdy  frame  and  an  eager  mind.  His  teaching  and  the 
many  administrative  tasks  that  fell  to  him  always  occupied  his 
attention  to  the  subordination  of  what  he  might  have  preferred 
to  do,  or  of  what  might  have  been  to  his  personal  interest  to 
do.  Of  a  consequence  his  writings  and  public  utterances  rep- 
resented extra  labor,  out  of  hours.  The  only  one  of  his  books 
not  written  at  the  behest  of  a  publisher,  he  once  told  me, 
was  the  Folkways.  In  addition  to  the  engrossing  activities 
which  I  have  mentioned,  there  was  yet  another  factor  which 
held  back  systematic  enterprises  on  the  large  scale;  left  to 
himself,  Sumner's  tendency  was  to  wait  on  further  acquisition 
and  on  organization  of  his  knowledge  rather  than  to  hasten 
his  output.  This  was  particularly  evident  in  respect  to  his 
purely  sociological  work.  A  dozen  years  ago  a  breezy  young 
reporter  is  said  to  have  asked  him  why  he  did  not  publish  on 
sociology,  and  to  have  received  the  gruff  rejoinder:    "Because 

ix 


X  INTRODUCTION 

I  would  rather  correct  my  own  mistakes  than  have  other  people 
do  it  for  me." 

In  view  of  these  circumstances  it  is  natural  that  the  shorter 
writings  and  lectures  of  Professor  Sumner  should  have  been 
more  characteristic  of  him  than  are  most  of  his  books  —  how- 
ever weighty  the  latter  in  their  scholarship  and  however  highly 
esteemed  by  his  colleagues  in  the  social  sciences.  The  most 
characteristic  of  all  his  activities  was  his  teaching,  for  this  was 
his  absorbing  interest;  but  next  to  that,  I  think,  come  his 
occasional  essays  —  with  which  I  should  class  the  two  little 
volumes  on  Protectionism  and  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each 
Other.  Sumner  had  time  for  essays  where  he  was  sure  to  be 
hurried  on  his  books;  his  consecutive  leisure  came  in  small 
fragments.  And  he  could  improve  such  shorter  periods  with 
great  success,  for  he  was  remarkably  rapid  in  his  composition; 
his  ideas  were  in  order  from  his  much  teaching,  and  he  could  go 
ahead,  he  once  told  me,  as  fast  as  he  could  drive  the  pen. 

These  are  the  main  reasons  why  Sumner's  essays  form  a  more 
spontaneous,  characteristic,  and  finished  product  than  his 
longer  writings;  and  so  he  has  been  known,  if  not  to  scholars, 
at  any  rate  to  the  general  public,  better  through  them  than 
through  his  books. 

No  one  who  has  the  interests  of  American  education  at  heart 
can  regret  that  Sumner's  fidelity  to  duty  prevented  him  from 
writing  more  —  or  even  from  completing  what  he  had  begun. 
His  enduring  output  is  the  human  document,  the  awakened 
minds  of  many  young  men,  which  is  a  product  that  can  only 
roll  up  in  significance  as  time  passes,  and  is  incapable  of  being 
antedated  or  superseded.  It  was  the  influence  of  a  mind  and 
character  that  could  not  harbor  the  small  and  mean  which  made 
Sumner  such  a  power  in  his  world.  This  was  true  through- 
out his  career,  and  neither  the  force  of  his  intellect  nor 
that  of  his  character  ever  deserted  him,  even  in  the  shadow  of 
the  end.  It  is  the  Sumner  of  the  later  years  whom  the  present 
writer  knew;  and  I  have  been  asked,  as  a  close  associate  and 
co-worker,  to  afford  his  friends  and  admirers  some  idea  of  his 
activities,  and  of  the  man  himself,  particularly  in  this  his  latter 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

phase.'  I  am  aware  that,  in  these  days,  so  soon  after  his 
death,  anything  that  I  may  write  of  him  is  sure  to  betray  a 
personal  feehng  for  the  man,  one  which  grew  ever  stronger  as  I 
knew  him  better. 

Of  Sumner's  labors  one  might  say  in  general  that  they  were  as 
unremitting  as  strength  would  allow,  whereas  before  his  illness 
of  the  early  nineties  they  had  been  \drtually  incessant.  There 
seems  to  have  been  in  this  man  such  intellectual  eagerness, 
such  a  very  mania  for  discovering  the  truth,  coupled  with  so 
strong  a  power  of  will,  that  he  wore  out  a  robust  physique 
untimely  —  for  with  his  vigorous  frame  and  sound  constitu- 
tion he  might  well  have  lived  out  the  life  of  a  Humboldt.  As 
it  was.  Professor  Sumner  retained  his  large  elective  courses 
and  ruled  them  with  iron  discipline,  up  to  a  few  years  before 
his  retirement;  and  to  the  very  end  of  his  active  service  he 
remained  an  incomparable  leader  in  the  college  faculty.  We 
younger  men  are  told  that  at  a  crisis  the  leadership  has  been 
wont  to  creep  into  his  hand  as  by  some  inherent  urge;  he 
hit  about  him  rather  regardlessly  in  the  preliminary  skirmishes, 
but  as  others  grew  hot  he  grew  cool  and  took  command  of 
the  situation.  One  who  seeks  to  account  for  what  Yale  Col- 
lege has  become,  and  who  realizes  that  such  an  institution  is  not 
built  of  bricks  and  stones,  but  of  men,  cannot  leave  out  of  reck- 
oning the  often  determinative  influence  wielded  for  nearly  forty 
years  by  Professor  Sumner.  He  did  not  fumble  about  in  the 
mazes  of  compromise,  and  he  was  unafraid.  Even  during  the 
last  years  of  his  life  he  never  lost  his  characteristic  power  of 
cutting  straight  to  the  core  of  an  issue;  nor,  indeed,  was 
he  deprived,  until  the  latest  days,  of  his  joy  in  battle.  He 
remained,  as  he  had  been  in  his  prime,  the  redoubtable 
debater,  confronting  opposition  with  a  combination  of  manner, 
matter,  and  method  with  which  few  ever  successfully 
coped.  But  the  fight,  though  Homeric  in  its  tactics,  was 
always  fair;  Sumner  took  his  wounds  in  front,  and  as  one 
observer   remarked,   always   shouted,    "Look   out!   I*m  com- 

'  A  considerable  portion  of  what  immediately  follows  is  quoted  or  adapted 
from  a  letter  of  mine  in  the  New  York  Nation  for  April  21,  1910, 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

ing  for  you!"  before  he  charged.  The  greatest  immediate 
loss  involved  in  Professor  Sumner's  retirement  and  death, 
excluding  the  bereavement  of  those  who  loved  him,  is  that  sus- 
tained by  the  faculty  of  Yale  College.  It  is  no  derogation  to 
anybody  to  say  that  he  was  sui  generis  and  can  have  no  suc- 
cessor. AYhat  the  larger  Yale  College  thought  of  him  was 
jBnely  expressed  in  the  demonstration  of  June,  1909,  when  Yale 
accorded  him  the  doctorate  of  laws  —  when  fathers  and  sons 
united  in  applauding  the  great  teacher  of  two  generations. 
This  affected  him,  as  he  admitted,  to  tears;  and  during  the 
succeeding  summer  he  received  many  letters  expressive  of 
gratitude  and  affection,  which  made  him  feel,  as  he  told  me, 
that  the  world  was  using  him  well. 

But  whatever  may  be  said  of  his  intellectual  qualities,  yet 
the  most  attractive  and  the  grandest  aspect  of  Sumner's 
latter  years  was  that,  not  of  his  mind,  but  of  his  character. 
He  was  a  Roman  soul  among  us;  he  lived  before  his  students 
and  colleagues  as  the  embodiment  of  honesty  and  fear- 
lessness. Duty  always  preceded  all  else  with  him;  the  mem- 
ory of  his  performance  of  what  some  would  call  hackwork, 
even  when  he  was  ill,  would  have  been  pathetic  if  it  had 
not  been  done  with  such  unconsciousness  and  simple  dignity. 
Until  the  aid  he  would  not  ask  for  was  almost  forced  upon 
him,  he  used  to  grade  between  three  hundred  and  five 
hundred  test  papers  every  week.  He  was  to  the  end  the  uncom- 
promising foe  of  hypocrisy,  sham,  ostentation,  and  weak  senti- 
ment—  which  last  he  curtly  denominated  "gush."  Further, 
he  was  in  character  a  humble  man.  He  seemed  at  all  times 
positive  and  even  intellectually  arrogant,  but  his  personal 
opinion  of  his  own  services  and  work  was  entirely  self-depre- 
ciatory. In  personal  relations  he  was  unassuming,  helpful, 
excessively  grateful  for  small  services  rendered,  but  beset  by 
the  fear  that  he  would  cause  anybody  else  some  trouble.  In 
many  respects  his  character  was  strangely  like  that  of  Charles 
Darwin.  He  was  ready  at  all  times  with  kindly  counsel  and 
sympathy  —  and  the  counsel  was  that  of  deep  wisdom  and  the 
sympathy  that  of  a  warm  heart.     I  have  somewhat  enlarged 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

upon  this  side  of  his  nature,  because  in  appearance  and  to  sHght 
acquaintance  he  was  stern,  often  gruff,  seemingly  without 
human  feelings.  But  this  was  all  a  matter  of  externals.  He 
was  a  strong  hater  and  a  strong  lover,  as  must  happen  where 
the  essence  of  a  man's  character  is  strength. 

It  was  in  characteristic  response  to  the  call  of  duty  that 
Professor  Sumner's  last  efforts  and  energy  were  expended.  He 
was  scheduled  for  the  presidential  address  ^  of  the  American 
Sociological  Society;  and  he  dragged  himself  off  to  New  York, 
ill  and  weak,  but  as  determined  as  ever,  in  the  snowstorm  of 
Monday,  December  27,  1909,  with  his  manuscript  carefully 
prepared,  typewritten  and  corrected,  in  his  valise.  No  re- 
monstrances could  have  stopped  him.  He  struggled  up  nearly 
to  the  battle-line,  prepared  to  discharge  his  duty,  as  of  old, 
but  there  was  no  strength  remaining.  "How  characteristic 
of  Sumner!"  was  the  common  remark  at  the  tidings  of  his  fall. 
One  could  scarcely  wish  for  a  more  graphic  summing-up  of  his 
character  and  career. 

The  essays  which  now  lie  before  the  reader  suggest  many  a 
comment  for  which  the  necessary  brevity  of  this  introduction 
may  not  provide  space.  Within  the  last  months  I  have  heard 
and  read  a  number  of  expressions  whose  general  tenor  was: 
If  Sumner  had  only  lived  a  little  longer  to  receive  something 
of  the  belated  honor  of  the  prophet  amongst  his  own  people! 
It  would  be  interesting  to  select  from  the  following  essays  and 
from  Sumner's  books  passages  of  an  almost  prophetic  nature; 
but  the  fact  that  they  are  such  —  and  many  are  too  profound 
in  their  insight  to  have  yet  attained  recognition  —  is  not  at  all 
a  marvel  of  second-sight;  it  is  only  the  inevitable  emergence 
of  the  truth  that  makes  them  seem  so.  Wisdom  has  often  ere 
this  been  sought  out  with  intense  labor  and  ardent  mind,  first 
to  be  dubbed  ** academic"  by  the  ignorant,  preoccupied,  or 
prejudiced,  and  then  to  be  wondered  at  and  referred  to  as  a 
sort  of  supernatural  product.  The  historic  ascription  wrung 
from  ignorance  by  knowledge  has  been  that  of  wizardry. 
^  "Religion  and  the  Mores,"  pp.  129-146  of  this  volume. 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

But  no  one  need  commiserate  Sumner  because  he  did  not 
receive  full  meed  of  deserved  recognition  while  he  lived.  It  is 
not  that  he  was  unappreciative  of  praise;  he  was  deeply  sensi- 
tive to  it,  contrary  to  the  impression  which  not  a  few  have 
derived.  No  man  is  all  iron.  But  if  one  reads  the  Folkways 
with  understanding  he  will  see  that  its  author  was  in  possession 
of  a  point  of  view  and  of  a  philosophy  of  life  which  rendered 
him,  though  humanly  appreciative  of  kindly  expression,  essen- 
tially independent  of  the  commendation  or  blame  accorded 
to  him  by  his  time.  He  used  sometimes  to  refer  in  his  quizzical 
way  to  some  historical  character  (I  think  it  was  not  Saint 
Paul)  whose  aim  was  to  be  "all  things  to  all  men,"  in  the 
sense  of  pleasing  everybody;  and  he  used  to  conclude,  dryly, 
"It  is  not  reported  that  he  succeeded." 

No  one  could  say  that  Sumner  himself  strove  to  be  all  things 
to  all  men.  He  never  hesitated  to  strike  out  against  the  tide, 
and  he  did  not  fear  to  be  alone  in  so  doing;  nor,  indeed,  did 
it  affect  his  composure  and  resolution  if  he  made  no  headway, 
but  was  overborne  by  the  current.  This  attracted  to  him, 
among  the  strong  men  of  his  time,  many  admirers,  of  whose 
sentiments  he  was  probably  uninformed;  for  instance,  the 
late  Mr.  Hammond  Lamont  once  wrote  of  him:  "Professor 
Sumner's  valiant  fight  for  free  trade  —  almost  single-handed 
it  seemed  at  one  time  —  has  won  him  my  especial  respect." 
He  thought  protectionism,  currency-inflation,  and  imperialism 
wrong  and  hateful,  and  assailed  them  at  sight,  in  all  times  and 
places,  irrespective  of  the  sentiment  of  the  age.  No  man  ever 
had  a  profounder  faith  in  the  possibility  of  attaining  to  truth 
by  study  and  thought,  and  few  have  had  such  power  —  which 
goes  with  strength  of  conviction  and  unassuming  courage  — 
literally  to  infect  others  with  the  same  belief.  These  were  the 
chief  of  the  factors  that  made  him  so  compelling  a  teacher; 
one  of  the  grandest  traits  of  young  men  is  their  generous 
enthusiasm  for  intellectual  honesty  and  ardor,  and  for  uncal- 
culating  fearlessness  in  following  conviction,  once  attained, 
wherever  it  leads;  and  Sumner  fairly  radiated  these  qualities. 
One  may  wish  for  him  that  he  could  have  had  the  personal 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

gratification  of  seeing  his  ideas,  for  which  he  had  suffered 
unpopularity  and  abuse,  recognized;  but  he  had  the  greater 
satisfaction  of  looking  back  upon  a  life  of  spotless  honor, 
undeviating  in  its  sincerity  and  intrepidly  true  to  truth  where 
truth  seemed  to  be.  That  a  wave  of  popular  sentiment  might 
roll  up  to  exalt  part  of  what  he  stood  for,  he  well  knew;  but 
he  was  fortified  to  expect  that,  in  the  complex  play  of  human 
interests,  the  *' mores"  would  presently  swing  off  toward  some 
new  form  of  the  irrational,  or  even  back  to  the  old  follies  again. 

It  is  plain,  from  the  evidence  of  these  essays,  that  Sumner 
was  always  a  sociologist,  that  is,  he  always  reached  out 
spontaneously  to  an  interpretation  of  societal  phenomena 
broader  than  the  purely  economic  or  political  one.  The  is- 
sues attacked  in  these  essays  are  approached  with  a  breadth 
of  vision  which  goes  with  a  general  science  of  society  and 
not  with  any  single  one  of  its  subdivisions.  Nobody  who 
has  studied  the  science  of  society  with  Sumner  ever  has 
any  doubts  about  there  being  such  a  science;  what  persuaded 
us  that  there  was  one,  was  the  actual  demonstration  set 
before  us  in  the  classroom.  There  was  something  that  appealed 
to  us  as  superlatively  vital  and  enthralling,  but  of  which 
no  antecedent  discipline  had  given  us  more  than  an 
oblique  glimpse.  Until  the  memory  of  his  breadth  and  in- 
clusiveness  of  vision  as  to  human  reaction  and  motive  has 
faded  quite  away,  it  will  be  an  arduous  task  to  prove  to 
one  of  Sumner's  students  that  there  is  no  general  science  of 
society.  No  amount  of  mere  formal  analysis  and  intellectual 
fence-building  can  stand  against  demonstration. 

Sumner  was  a  path-breaker  by  nature  and  circumstance; 
but  he  had  his  impulsion,  as  is  the  way  of  men,  from  the  hand 
of  another.^  To  judge  by  his  own  comments,  he  derived  from 
Herbert  Spencer  some  such  intellectual  awakening  as  he  later 
gave  to  many.     But  it  is  wrong  and  shallow  to  class  Sumner 

^  There  is,  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  June,  1889  (pp.  261-268), 
a  Sketch  of  William  Graham  Sumner,  which  is  largely  autobiographical  and 
which  deserves  re-publication.  It  touches  upon  several  of  the  points  noticed 
in  this  Introduction. 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

as  a  thick-and-thin  adherent  of  the  Spencerian  system;  he  was 
not  adapted  to  discipleship.  He  accepted  a  number  of  Spencer's 
ideas  —  some  of  which  were  sure  to  appeal  to  him  tempera- 
mentally —  notably  those  leading  to  the  laissez-faire  attitude 
and  to  distrust  of  socialistic  tendencies ;  but  he  parted  com- 
pany with  Spencer  in  the  latter  author's  most  characteristic 
and  fundamental  point  of  view.  Spencer  was  essentially  a 
philosopher  and  not  a  scientist,  seeking  in  his  evolutionary 
studies,  carried  through  the  bulky  volumes  of  the  Synthetic 
Philosophy,  for  an  inclusive  formula.  But  this  is  not  what 
science  is  looking  for,  and  Sumner's  sympathies  and  respect 
were  all  for  science  —  in  particular  for  natural  science.  He 
abhorred  and  eschewed  the  metaphysical  and  intuitional; 
he  studied  philosophy  much  as  a  young  man,  but  as  he 
once  expressed  it,  he  "had  been  engaged  in  heaving  that 
whole  cargo  overboard  ever  since."  I  have  never  heard  in 
his  conversation  or  seen  in  his  writings  anji^hing  to  indicate 
that  he  accepted  the  essence  of  the  Spencerian  system; 
on  the  contrary,  he  never  advised  us  to  read  the  First 
Principles  or  other  parts  of  the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  except, 
perhaps,  the  Principles  of  Biologyy  and  used  often  to  say  that 
the  Principles  of  Sociology  represented  the  only  large  part  of 
Spencer's  work  destined  to  live,  because  here  Spencer  was 
forced  to  collect  his  data  and  so  "get  down  to  facts."  Among 
scientists  Darwin  was  Sumner's  hero,  as  he  generally  is  to  the 
real  scientist;  his  honor  of  Darwin  is  indicated,  for  instance, 
by  his  often  expressed  perplexity  as  to  how  Darwin,  other- 
wise well-nigh  impeccable,  could  have  made  a  bad  slip  in  his 
description  of  Tierra  del  Fuego  and  its  inhabitants. 

I  feel  impelled  to  refer  in  this  place  to  the  belief  of  some  of 
Sumner's  admirers  that  he  made  a  mistake  when  he  retired 
from  political  economy  and  took  up  the  more  general  science 
of  society.  As  well  say  that  there  is  an  error  in  the  develop- 
ment from  the  blade  to  the  ear  and  the  full  corn  in  the  ear. 
The  obituary  notices  of  a  year  ago  recalled  the  Sumner  of  the 
seventies  and  eighties  rather  than  the  tranquil  student  of  more 
recent   years  —  Sumner   the  political   economist  rather  than 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

Sumner  in  his  latest  and  ripest  period.  The  popular  tendency 
in  thinking  of  him  is  to  hark  back  to  his  vigor  as  the  embattled 
champion  of  free  trade  and  sound  money,  and  if  something  is 
said  of  the  latter  part  of  his  career,  it  is  likely  to  have  to  do  with 
his  opposition  to  the  imperialistic  movement.  Popular  mention 
of  the  book  destined  to  be  his  last,  the  Folkways^  is  generally 
perfunctory  and  vague.  Such  an  attitude  is  natural  enough, 
for  Sumner's  activities  of  thirty  years  ago  were  such  as  to  leave 
a  lasting  impression  upon  his  friends,  and  an  even  more  per- 
sistent recollection,  if  that  were  possible,  in  the  minds  of  those 
whom  he  assailed.^  Upon  this  period  of  tremendous  vigor, 
in  the  classroom,  in  the  faculty  councils,  in  publication,  and 
on  the  platform,  there  ensued,  in  the  early  nineties,  a  break- 
down in  health  which  coincided  with  Professor  Sumner's  with- 
drawal from  the  field  of  political  economy,  and  which,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  public,  seemed  to  mark  the  end  of  his  effective 
career.  Many  of  us  would  be  happy  enough  to  conclude  a 
career  with  the  renown  which  Sumner  enjoyed  as  a  politi- 
cal economist,  especially  if  we  include  several  substan- 
tial volumes  on  economic  subjects,  published  in  the  later 
nineties  and  taken  by  some  to  be  signs  of  the  closing  up  of 
a  lifework.  But  to  him  the  end  of  labors  in  this  field  merely 
marked  the  termination  of  one  more  phase  of  a  full  life.  And 
the  later  and  final  mode  was  there  already  and  had  been  from 
the  beginning.  I  have  said  that  Sumner  was  always  a  sociolo- 
gist; this  is  reported  to  have  been  evident  even  in  his  clerical 
period,  but  more  definitely  it  dates,  as  has  been  remarked,  from 
his  acquaintance  with  Spencer.  For  he  had  read  The  Study  of 
Sociology  at  the  time  of  its  publication  in  the  early  seventies, 
and  used  frequently  to  mention  the  sense  of  intellectual  assent 
and  emancipation  which  broke  over  him  upon  making  acquaint- 
ance with  this  and  the  larger  sociological  works  of  Spencer. 

^  Says  "the  distinguished  American  economist,"  quoted  in  the  Sketch  pre- 
viously referred  to:  ".  .  .  the  results  of  his  experience  in  the  discussion 
of  the  relative  merits  and  advantages  of  the  systems  of  free  trade  and  pro- 
tection have  been  such  that  probably  no  defender  of  the  latter  would  now 
be  willing  to  meet  him  in  a  public  discussion  of  these  topics." 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

It  was  characteristic  of  Sumner  that  he  must  not  only  know 
the  truth,  but  pass  it  on;  and,  after  some  conflict  with  the 
entrenched  conservatism  of  the  day,  he  finally  set  before  Yale 
College  men  the  first  course  in  sociology  ever  presented  in 
an  American  college  curriculum.^  He  was  moving,  as  was  his 
wont,  steadily  and  safely  from  the  special  to  the  general.  His 
interest  in  the  general  science  steadily  increased,  his  second 
inspiration  dating  from  the  reading,  in  the  late  eighties,  of 
Julius  Lippert's  Kulturgeschichte.  His  breakdown  in  health 
precipitated  the  change  which  had  been  preparing;  and, 
upon  his  partial  recovery,  he  ceased  to  teach  political 
economy  to  undergraduates  and  developed  his  classic  course 
in  what  the  students  came  to  call  "Sumnerology."  In 
those  days  a  Yale  man  was  hardly  supposed  to  have  won 
a  genuine  B.A.  if  he  had  not  had  *' Billy  Sumner."  Within 
a  few  years  the  graduate  courses  also  in  political  economy 
had  been  superseded  by  others  in  the  science  of  society, 
and  Professor  Sumner  had  ceased  altogether  to  teach  the 
specialty  of  his  young  manhood.  Many,  I  say,  have  re- 
gretted this  change,  but  it  was  inevitable;  the  only  legitimate 
regret  is  that  he  did  not  live  to  reap  in  full  from  the  sowing 
of  a  lifetime  —  he  himself  wished  that  he  had  been  able  to 
surrender  political  economy  sooner.  For  his  interests  had 
outgrown  the  sub-science  and  reached  out  toward  the  more 
comprehensive  study  of  the  life  of  society  in  all  its  phases. 
The  idea  that  Sumner's  career  was  over,  when,  in  the  early 
nineties,  he  retired  from  political  economy,  has  always  been  a 
source  of  irritation  to  the  men  who  worked  with  him  in  his 
latter  years.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  us  had  been  taken 
to  his  study  and  had  viewed  with  amazement  the  serried  rows 
of  classified  notes  on  anthropology  and  the  science  of  society, 
and  we  knew  what  not  many  outsiders  did,  that  the  old-time 

^"I  formed  a  class,"  he  says,  "to  read  Spencer's  book  in  the  parts  as  they 
came  out,  and  believe  that  I  began  to  interest  men  in  this  important  depart- 
ment of  study,  and  to  prepare  them  to  follow  its  development,  years  before 
any  such  attempt  was  made  at  any  other  university  in  the  world."  Sketch, 
p.  2G6. 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

industry  and  vigor  had  not  lessened;  we  used  to  believe  that 
if  Spencer  had  had  such  a  collection  of  materials,  the  Principles 
of  Sociology  would  have  been  far  more  strongly  buttressed,  and 
would  more  nearly  have  resembled  the  irresistible  Origin  of 
Species.  Equipped  linguistically,  as  I  shall  later  describe,  for 
the  collection  of  materials,  he  had  plunged  into  the  field  marked 
off  by  Tylor,  Lubbock,  Spencer,  and  others,  and  had  read  an 
incredible  number  of  books,  journals,  and  other  sources.  The 
first  public  indication  of  this  research,  and  of  his  long  reflec- 
tion upon  its  results,  was  the  appearance,  in  1907,  of  Folkways, 
a  Study  of  the  Sociological  Importance  of  Usages,  Manners, 
Customs,  Mores,  and  Morals.  I  cannot  go  into  this  publica- 
tion except  to  say  (as  bearing  upon  what  immediately  pre- 
cedes) that  it  has  astonished  scholars  by  the  range  of  its  survey 
over  a  field  to  which  the  author  had  been  able  to  give  ex- 
clusive attention  for  so  comparatively  short  a  time.  The  bib- 
liography of  this  book  covers  fifteen  closely  printed  pages,  and 
yet  includes  scarcely  any  titles  of  systematic  works,  and  prac- 
tically no  references  to  the  author's  extensive  economic  read- 
ing. To  his  fellow-scientists  Folkways  revealed  the  fact  that 
Sumner's  scholarly  labors,  under  conditions  of  ill-health  and 
of  declining  strength,  had  in  later  years  even  surpassed  those 
of  his  prime.  Further,  and  more  important,  it  is  thought  by 
many  that  Folkways  represents  a  fundamental  step  in  the 
development  of  any  sound  science  of  society.  Sumner  used 
to  say  that  he  had  found,  in  the  conception  of  the  mores, 
"either  a  gold-mine  or  a  big  hole  in  the  ground,"  and  that  it 
must  be  left  to  the  future  to  determine  which. 

To  understand  the  bearing  of  this  book  on  the  treatise 
covering  the  science  of  society  (of  which,  in  the  preface  to  the 
Folkways,  Professor  Sumner  speaks  as  his  next  task),  one  must 
realize  that  the  idea  of  the  "  folkways"  or  "mores  "was  one  which 
he  came  to  regard  as  entirely  fundamental  to  any  scientific 
system  of  sociology.  He  had  written  for  five  years,  more  or 
less,  on  his  projected  general  treatise  on  the  Science  of  Society 
before  he  came  to  what  he  called  the  "section  on  the  mores"; 
and  this  section  it  was  which  developed,  under  the  title  Folk- 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

waySy  into  a  separate  volume  to  precede  the  major  treatise. 
It  is  entirely  regrettable  that  the  latter  could  not  have  been 
completed,  but  if  a  choice  could  have  been  made,  it  would  have 
been  better  that  Folkways  should  receive  the  preference.  Since 
its  publication  the  scientific  recognition  accorded  to  it  has  been 
steadily  increasing.  What  place  it  will  finally  make  for  itself 
cannot  yet  be  said;  but  no  other  of  Professor  Sumner's 
books  has  approached  it  in  profundity  and  in  lasting  im- 
portance. 

Like  Darwin,  Sumner  was  an  indefatigable  collector  of  facts. 
His  industry  was  truly  discouraging  to  those  about  him. 
Steadily,  relentlessly,  day  by  day,  year  in  and  year  out,  he 
explored  his  literature  until  the  sum  of  his  readings  was  almost 
incredible;  a  friend,  he  told  me,  asked  him  how  he  had  ever 
found  time  to  read  the  multitude  of  books  and  articles  referred 
to  in  Folkways,  and  he  had  answered  that  he  did  not  himself 
know.  And  his  bibliographies  were  never  padded  by  the  inclu- 
sion of  matter  which  he  had  only  scanned;  nor  were  the 
references  to  publications  in  the  more  remote  foreign  languages 
second-hand  or  gotten  by  way  of  a  translator  and  then  listed 
as  from  personal  reading.  As  bearing  on  the  industry  and 
the  insatiable  scientific  curiosity  of  the  man,  his  attainment 
of  control  over  languages  is  extraordinary  evidence.  The  late 
Prof.  Edward  Bourne  used  to  tell  how,  in  the  middle  eighties, 
Sumner  was  apparently  unfamiliar  with  other  modern  foreign 
languages  than  French  and  German;  for  upon  a  certain  occa- 
sion he  had  said  doubtfully  of  the  word  *'naranja"  that  he 
supposed  that  it  was  Spanish  for  "orange."  But  shortly 
thereafter  he  apparently  felt  that  he  must  extend  his  range, 
for  certain  of  his  dictionaries,  Dutch,  Danish,  Portuguese,  and 
others,  bear  acquisition  dates  of  the  late  eighties.  Within  a 
few  years  he  had  acquired  the  two  Scandinavian  tongues, 
Dutch,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  Italian,  Russian,  and  Polish. 
None  of  these,  apparently,  was  begun  before  the  age  of  forty- 
five;  and  it  was  perfectly  characteristic  of  Sumner  that  he 
"ground  the  paradigms,"  as  he  said,  in  all  cases,  and  even 
went   to   the   extent   of   translating   all   the   exercises   in   his 


INTRODUCTION 


XXI 


grammars;  not  only,  for  example,  the  Swedish-Into-English 
exercises,  but  those  from  English  into  Swedish.  The  excellent 
Balbus  may  have  begun  Greek  at  seventy,  but  among  moderns 
such  a  display  of  energy  and  industry  at  middle  age  is  sufficiently 
remarkable.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Sumner,  as  his 
maiden  publication  witnesses,  was  a  good  Hebrew  scholar, 
and  that  he  knew  Greek  and  Latin  well.  So  that  his  control 
of  languages,  though  he  used  to  say  that  he  was  not  quick  at 
learning  them,  extended  to  some  thirteen  or  fourteen;  and  of 
these  he  had  an  exact  and  precise  grammatical  control.  It 
may  be  added  that  at  about  the  same  time  he  was  acquiring  a 
knowledge  of  calculus  in  order  to  see  for  himself  what  there 
was  in  mathematical  economics.  And  all  this  while  writing, 
lecturing,  teaching  a  heavy  schedule,  and  taking  a  leading  part 
in  faculty  labors. 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  Sumner's  mode  comes  out  quite 
unmistakably  in  his  essays;  and  that  is  his  simplicity  and 
clearness.  He  struck  straight  at  the  heart  of  a  matter.  He 
used  to  say  that  there  were  three  questions  to  be  asked  about 
any  production:  What  is  it?  How  do  you  know  it?  What 
of  it?  Upon  the  last  inquiry  he  laid  particular  emphasis; 
but,  granted  that  there  was  any  use  in  doing  a  piece  of  work, 
he  was  keen  about  his  other  two  criteria:  that  it  should  be 
set  forth  so  it  could  be  understood,  —  that  one  should  tell,  with 
brevity  and  clearness,  what  it  was  that  he  had  found,  —  and 
that  he  should  give  good  and  sufficient  reason  for  his  opinions. 
He  used  to  prune  the  theses  written  under  him  of  verbiage  and 
slash  out  inexact  expressions,  usually  making  careful  emenda- 
tions, until  the  pages  were  scarcely  recognizable.  For  himself,  he 
abjured  latinity  and  chose  the  tersest  and  most  rugged  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  terms,  using,  for  an  extreme  example,  a  word  like  leech- 
craft  in  place  of  a  more  indirect  and  ponderous  term.  He  hated 
long  and  involved  sentences,  and  urged  us  all  to  be  sure  to 
translate  German  passages  that  looked  as  if  they  were  significant, 
to  see  if  they  really  were;  for,  as  he  said,  "the  German  lan- 
guage and  style  lend  themselves  easily  to  bathos."  He  believed 
that  if  the  thought  were  clear  the  expression  would  be,  and 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

where  the  latter  was  rambling  and  disordered  he  looked  for 
turgidity  of  thought.  His  own  clarity  and  epigrammatic  ex- 
pression were  probably  a  reflection  of  his  own  nature,  for  he 
spoke  simply  and  vigorously,  using  homely  phrases  that  stuck 
in  the  mind  —  he  certainly  got  so  that  he  thought  in  a  way 
corresponding  to  this  graphical,  forceful  phraseology.  But  as 
qualities  of  style  he  also  recognized  and  cultivated  brevity  and 
curt  precision;  in  his  collections  are  several  envelopes  filled 
with  slips  of  paper,  such  as  he  used  to  carry  about  in  his  pocket 
for  jotting,  covered  with  tersely  expressed  thought  on  a  variety 
of  topics.  His  original  sketch  of  an  essay  or  part  of  a  book, 
at  least  in  his  latter  years,  was  likely  to  contain  strings  of  short 
sentences,  which  he  then  pieced  together  to  some  extent  in  his 
many  re-wTitings.  The  volleys  of  short  sentences  in  some 
of  his  writings  —  especially  those  originally  in  lecture-form  — 
are  unquestionably  a  literary  defect,  however  much  the 
avoidance  of  involution  may  conduce  to  clearness.  He  grew 
ever  more  impatient  of  verbosity  in  writing  and  of  vagueness 
in  thought. 

Some  have  said  that  Sumner's  clarity  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  never  saw  but  one  side  to  a  question,  and  therefore  was 
not  bothered  by  the  need  of  hedging  and  shading.  It  certainly 
conduces  to  clarity  to  see  an  issue  in  that  way;  but  it  would  not 
be  fair  to  one  who  has  stood  to  so  many  as  a  champion  and 
exponent  of  fairness  to  let  this  offhand  version  go  un- 
challenged. The  Commencement  orator  of  1909,  when 
Sumner  received  the  Yale  doctorate  of  laws,  said:  "Like 
all  great  teachers  and  real  leaders  of  men,  he  is  intensely 
dogmatic;  but  his  dogmas  are  not  the  result  of  narrow- 
ness or  prejudice;  they  come  from  prolonged  study  and 
profound  thought."  This  sentence  contains,  implicitly  at 
least,  the  rationale  of  Sumner's  dogmatism.  He  was  always 
teaching  the  elements  of  social  science  to  beginners,  whether 
they  sat  in  his  classes  or  not;  and  in  the  teaching  of  the  ele- 
ments dogmatism  is  necessary.  Any  teacher  who  knows  his 
business  is  aware  that  some  well-defined  standpoint  must  be 
gained  before  the  balancing  of  theories  can  be  profitably  begun. 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

Hence  Sumner  was,  in  his  teaching  and  essays,  very  positive; 
and  the  worth  of  this  pedagogical  device  is  vouched  for  by 
many  —  even  by  those  who  now  dispute  the  positions  upheld 
by  Sumner.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Sumner  did  not 
thoroughly  believe  in  what  he  said;  he  was  intellectually 
honest  to  the  extent  of  refusing  to  support  in  debate  the  easier, 
more  plausible,  but  to  him  wrong  side  of  a  question.  His 
flatly  stated  opinions  were  the  result  of  long  study;  what  he 
presented  was,  as  it  were,  the  building  without  the  scaffold- 
ing. This  could  readily  be  seen  by  his  more  advanced  stu- 
dents, for  in  his  graduate  classes  he  opened  up  to  us  his 
doubts  and  perplexities  in  the  frankest  manner;  and  no  one 
could  talk  with  him  as  man  to  man  without  becoming  aware 
that  he  held  all  his  scientific  opinions  open  to  revision.  His 
mind  was  essentially  hospitable  to  new  truth;  but  pending  its 
emergence  he  clung  with  great  loyalty  to  what  he  regarded 
as  already  demonstrated.  Above  all,  he  clave  to  "common 
sense,"  and  used  often  to  urge  us  to  hold  in  abeyance  any 
theory  which  seemed  to  conflict  with  it;  for  correspondence 
with  common  sense  was,  to  him,  an  ultimate  test. 

Sumner's  attitude  toward  his  profession  was  marked  by  a 
certain  austerity.  He  would  sometimes  regret  that  he  had  not 
gone  into  law,  but  was  never  apologetic  as  respects  his  pro- 
fession, though  he  used  in  private  to  joke  about  it  in  a  grim 
sort  of  way.  This  quality  of  austerity  was  especially  happy 
in  a  man  who  stood  for  sociology;  for  if  any  modern  science 
needs  the  austere  exponent,  it  is  precisely  that  one.  "The 
field  of  sociology,"  Sumner  once  said  to  me,  "is  so  raw 
that  any  crank  can  fasten  on  it  from  any  angle."  Here 
was  an  apt  arena  for  a  man  whose  grand  message  to  his 
students  was,  as  one  of  them  crystallized  it:  Don't  be 
a  damn  fool!  He  had  no  use  for  the  sensationalist  or  the 
man  with  the  programme,  and  it  was  partly  for  this  reason  that 
he  paid  so  little  attention  to  "practical  sociology"  and  reiter- 
ated in  his  lectures  and  in  the  announcements  of  his  courses 
that  the  science  of  society  as  he  taught  it  was  based  upon  the 
facts   of   ethnography   and   history.     He   had   comparatively 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

little  faith  in  systematic  works  on  sociology  and  paid  but 
slight  attention  to  them;  if  I  take  his  attitude  rightly,  it  was 
not  that  of  ''intellectual  arrogance,"  as  some  have  asserted, 
but  resulted  from  the  belief  that  extended  theorizing  and 
ambitious  attempts  at  systematization  are  not  suited  to 
the  early  phases  of  a  new  science.  There  is  too  much  else 
to  do. 

This  whole  attitude  of  austerity  bespoke  the  high  esteem  in 
which  he  held  the  subject  of  the  science  of  society;  he  regarded 
it  as  of  an  importance  so  great  as  not  to  admit  of  any  treat- 
ment save  the  most  careful  and  conscientious.  The  result 
was  that  his  utterances  in  the  classroom  were  marked  by  a 
seriousness,  almost  a  severity,  which  was  relieved  only  by  the 
recurrent  play  of  a  grim  humor  and  a  picturesque  and  stinging 
satire.  He  brought  to  these  lectures,  as  I  have  said  above,  a 
manner,  matter,  and  method  to  which  we  had  never  been  intro- 
duced. The  manner  was  authoritative  and  compelling,  and  was 
never  tainted  by  the  slightest  sensationalism,  whatever  dis- 
tortions of  his  sayings  may  have  reached  the  press;  and  it 
was  marked  by  a  most  delicate  propriety  of  expression,  for 
this  powerful  man  had,  as  respects  sensitiveness  and  purity, 
the  mind  of  a  woman.  The  matter  was  rich  and  thought- 
enkindling.  The  method  was  direct  and  unadorned,  the 
embodiment  of  the  conviction  that  truth  plainly  set  forth 
would  come  to  its  o^ti.  There  was  no  placation  of  the 
bearer,  no  device  to  hold  attention,  no  oratory  —  nothing 
but  the  man  and  the  word.  And  these  seemed  to  be  one; 
before  those  who  knew  Sumner  and  who  later  read  his  ^sTiting 
there  arises  the  reminiscence  of  a  broad-shouldered,  powerful 
frame,  leaning  forward  a  little  from  the  lecture  chair;  a  head 
whose  baldness  and  close-clipped  fringe  of  hair  seemed,  in 
what  they  revealed,  appropriate;  a  stern,  lined  face;  a  level 
eye,  deep-pouched  and  redoubtable  to  meet;  a  long,  bony, 
upraised  forefinger;  a  "voice  of  iron,"  an  enunciation  deep, 
almost  harsh  in  its  ruggedness,  and  with  impressive  pauses. 
To  this  figure  of  the  man  the  words  he  spoke  seemed  entirely 
congruous;  and  as  one  who  sat  under  Sumner  reads  the  essays 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

which  follow  he  cannot  dispel,  if  he  would,  the  memory  of  a 
commanding  personality. 

Many  of  us  have  enjoyed  in  times  past  the  occasional  essay  of 
Professor  Sumner,  and  have  wished  that  we  could  have  it  con- 
veniently at  hand,  either  for  our  own  re-reading  or  that  we 
might  the  more  readily  introduce  a  friend  to  a  sturdy  and  daunt- 
less personality  in  the  world  of  thought.  It  is  in  response 
mainly  to  desires  of  this  order  that  the  present  collection  has 
been  assembled.  I  am  aware  that  an  occasional  favorite  will 
not  be  found  here;  some  will  seek  in  vain  for  the  haunting 
phrase  or  pungent,  half-remembered  epigram  that  he  would 
gladly  con  again.  A  great  deal  of  Sumner's  writing  was  in 
the  form  of  short  articles,  hot  from  the  forge,  in  newspapers 
and  magazines;  but  all  of  these  could  not  be  collected  and 
included  in  the  present  volume.  His  famous  retort  to  the 
youthful  socialist  —  to  which  no  reply  was  forthcoming  —  was 
hard  to  leave  out;  so  was  the  laconic  Foreword  to  Professor 
Cutler's  Lynch  Law,  where  Sumner  says  of  lynching,  in  his 
characteristic  way;  "It  would  be  a  disgrace  to  us  if  amongst 
us  men  should  burn  a  rattlesnake  or  a  mad  dog.  The  badness 
of  the  victim  is  not  an  element  in  the  case  at  all.  Torture 
and  burning  are  forbidden,  not  because  the  victim  is  not  bad 
enough,  but  because  we  are  too  good."  But  these  shorter 
treasures  could  not  well  go  in,  and  the  selection  was  finally 
limited  to  the  longer  essays.  One  is  the  more  reconciled  to  the 
omissions  in  the  hope  that  a  Life  and  Letters  may  at  some  time 
see  the  light,  where  the  many  isolated  "Sumnerisms"  may 
find  appropriate  place. 

As  arranged,  the  following  seventeen  essays  fall  under  three 
main  heads,  both  topicwiseand,to  a  large  degree,  chronologically 
as  well.  Of  the  first  seven  all  but  one  are  products  of  the  last 
years  of  Professor  Sumner's  Hfe,  and  all  but  two  were  published 
in  1909  and  1910;  the  next  group  (five)  run  between  1887  and 
1894  and  have  to  do  chiefly  with  the  practical  applications  of 
sociological  principles  to  problems  of  the  time;  the  following 
four  come  between  1896  and  1900,  all  bearing  upon  the  "pre- 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

dominant  issue"  of  that  period,  imperialism.  To  these  groups 
is  added  a  single  essay  on  American  colleges,  dating  from 
1884  and  constituting  in  the  main  an  attack  on  the  then  pre- 
ferred position  of  the  classical  studies,  but  including  much 
that  is  of  a  more  than  local  or  temporary  value.  The  better 
to  preserve  their  character,  certain  of  these  essays  have  been 
left  in  their  original  lecture-form.  The  date  given  at  the 
head  of  each  essay  will  indicate  its  setting  and  thus  clear  up 
local  references  that  occur. 

All  of  Sumner's  sociological  ^NTitings  exliibit  the  strong,  sane 
mind  which  many  have  followed  admiringly  in  the  economic 
and  political  field,  traversing  the  broadest  and  most  compre- 
hensive phases  of  social  life.  But  the  dominating  idea  in  the 
thought  of  his  latter  years  was  that  of  the  "folkways"  or 
"mores,"  and  the  rest  of  his  later  writings  should  all  be  read 
in  the  light  of  his  last  book.  The  Status  of  Womeii  and 
Witchcraft  are  really  abbreviated  chapters,  originally  intended 
for  Folkways,  as  the  preface  to  that  volume  indicates.  The 
whole  of  the  unfinished  magnum  opus,  on  the  Science  of  So- 
ciety y  was  to  be  re- written  upon  the  basic  idea  of  the  mores; 
for  Sumner  regarded  these  as  the  germ  and  matrix  of  all 
societal  institutions.  Anyone  who  knew  Sumner  personally, 
or  through  his  writings,  will  realize  that  his  fundamentals  of 
societal  life  would  be  simple  and  profound,  non-metaphysical, 
and  based  upon  the  quintessence  of  common  sense.  The  Folk- 
ways is  a  repository  of  shrewd  observation  and  epigram- 
matic statement,  based  upon  broad  scholarship,  clear  vision, 
and  ripe  wisdom.  It  can  be  read  by  the  scholar  with  the 
scholar's  profit;  by  the  layman  with  the  result  of  enrichment 
of  thought  and  life;  and  by  any  former  student  of  Sumner, 
whoever  he  may  be,  with  all  that  others  may  get,  and,  in 
addition,  with  the  impressions  which  attend  the  raising  of  a 
host  of  memories  —  such  memories  as  throng  to  the  mind 
when  it  recalls  the  quickening  influence  of  the  loved  and 
honored. 

Albert  Galloway  Keller. 
New  Haven,  June  27,  1911. 


WAR 


ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM 

SUMNER 


w 


WAR 

[  1903  ] 

E  have  heard  our  poHtical  leaders  say  from  time  to 
time  that  "War  is  necessary,"  "War  is  a  good 
thing."  They  were  trying  to  estabhsh  a  major  premise 
which  would  suggest  the  conclusion,  "Therefore  let  us 
have  a  little  war  now,"  or  "It  is  wise,  on  general  prin- 
ciples, to  have  a  war  once  in  a  while."  That  argument 
may  be  taken  as  the  text  of  the  present  essay.  It  has 
seemed  to  me  worth  while  to  show  from  the  history  of 
civilization  just  what  war  has  done  and  has  not  done  for 
the  welfare  of  mankind. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  it  was  assumed  that  the 
primitive  state  of  mankind  was  one  of  Arcadian  peace, 
joy,  and  contentment.  In  the  nineteenth  century  the 
assumption  went  over  to  the  other  extreme  —  that  the 
primitive  state  was  one  of  universal  warfare.  This,  like 
the  former  notion,  is  a  great  exaggeration.  Man  in  the 
most  primitive  and  uncivilized  state  known  to  us  does  not 
practice  war  all  the  time;  he  dreads  it;  he  might  rather 
be  described  as  a  peaceful  animal.  Real  warfare  comes 
with  the  collisions  of  more  developed  societies. 

If  we  turn  to  facts  about  the  least  civilized  men  we 
find  proofs  that  they  are  not  warlike  and  do  not  practice 
war  if  they  can  help  it.     The  Australians  have  no  idea. 

Note.  —  It  has  seemed  best  to  the  editor  to  retain  the  original  lecture  form 
in  which  it  was  written. 

[3] 


c4 ;  .  ESSAyS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

of  conquest  or  battle.  Their  fights  do  not  lead  to 
slaughter  or  spoils  or  other  consequences  of  victory.^ 
Sometimes  a  fight  takes  the  form  of  a  friendly  trial  of 
skill  with  weapons  between  two  parties  who,  one  by  one, 
cast  their  weapons  at  each  other.  Quarrels  between 
tribes  are  sometimes  settled  by  a  single  combat  between 
chiefs.  "  Real  fighting  rarely  takes  place  unless  the  women 
arouse  the  men,"  and  even  then  it  is  only  carried  on  by 
taunts  and  wrestling.  "The  first  wound  ends  the  combat." 
It  is  often  followed  by  a  war  of  words,  hair-pulling,  and 
blows  with  yam-sticks  between  the  women. ^  The  Austra- 
"lians  have  no  war  because  they  have  no  property  that  is 
worth  pillaging;  no  tribe  has  anything  to  tempt  the 
cupidity  of  another.  They  have  no  political  organization, 
so  there  can  be  no  war  for  power. ^  Each  group  appro- 
priates hunting  grounds,  and  over  these  war  arises  only 
with  the  increase  of  population.  An  Englishman  who 
knew  them  well  said  that  he  knew  of  serious  wounds, 
but  he  had  known  of  but  one  death  from  their  affrays.^ 
Neither  are  the  Papuans  of  New  Guinea  warlike  in 
all  parts  of  the  island.  Like  other  men  on  the  same 
grade  of  civilization,  they  may  be  assassins,  but  they  are 
not  warriors,  and  if  two  bodies  of  them  meet  in  hostility, 
we  are  told  that  "there  is  a  remarkably  small  death-roll 
at  the  end  of  the  battle."^  Of  another  group  of  them 
we  are  told  that  they  have  no  offensive  weapons  at  all, 
but  live  without  disturbance  from  neighbors  and  without 
care  for  the  future.^  Their  children  rarely  quarrel  at 
play,  and  if  they  do,  it  ends  in  words.     We  are  told 

1  Curr,  E.  M.:  The  Australian  Race,  I,  86. 

2  Dawson,  J. :  Australian  Aborigines,  77. 

^  Semon,  R.:  In  the  Austrahan  Bush,  etc.,  225. 
^  Smyth,  R.  B.:  Aborigines  of  Victoria,  I,  156,  160. 
^  Abel,  C.  W. :  Savage  Life  in  New  Guinea,  etc.,  130. 
^  Krieger,  M.:  Neu-Guinea,  205. 


WAR  5 

that  they  lack  the  courage,  temper,  and  concentration 
of  will  which  would  be  necessary  for  a  good  schoolboy 
fight.  Perhaps  the  converse  would  be  true:  they  have 
no  schoolboy  fights  and  therefore  have  no  courage,  tem- 
per, and  concentration  of  will.  We  are  not  astonished 
to  hear  that  they  develop  excessive  tyranny  and  cruelty 
to  those  who  are  weaker  than  themselves,  especially  to 
women,  and  even  to  their  mothers.^  These  people  are 
excessively  distrustful  of  each  other  and  villages  but  a 
little  distance  apart  have  very  little  intercourse.  This  is 
attributed  in  great  part  to  head-hunting  and  cannibalism. 
In  general  they  know  the  limits  of  their  own  territory 
and  observe  them,  but  they  quarrel  about  women. ^  The 
people  in  German  Melanesia  are  of  the  same  kind;  they 
are  cowardly  and  mean,  make  raids  on  each  other's  land 
to  destroy  and  plunder,  when  they  think  they  can  do  it 
safely,  but  they  will  not  join  battle.^  On  some  of  the 
small  islands  war  is  entirely  unknown.^ 

The  Chatham  Islanders  sometimes  quarreled  over 
booty  won  in  pursuing  seals  or  whales,  but  they  had  a  law 
that  the  first  drop  of  blood  ended  the  fight  .^  The  Khonds 
in  Madras  became  insubordinate  a  few  years  ago  and  a 
police  force  was  sent  against  them;  they  prepared  stones 
to  roll  down  the  hill  in  front  of  their  village,  but  left  the 
rear  unguarded,  and  when  the  police  entered  by  the  rear 
the  Khonds  protested  against  the  unfairness  of  this  move- 
ment after   they   had  taken  such  precautions  in  front. 

^  Pfeil,  J. :  Studien  und  Beobachtungen  aus  der  Siidsee,  23. 

^  Hagen,  B. :  Unter  den  Papua's,  etc.,  250. 

3  Pfeil,  J.:  I.e.,  125. 

*  Kubary,  J. :  Beitrag  zur  Kenntnis  der  Nukuoro-  oder  Monteverde-Inseln, 
20;  Ibid.:  Ethnographischer  Beitrag  zur  Kenntnis  des  Karolinen  Arcliipels,  94; 
Bastian,  A.:  Die  mikronesischen  Kolonien,  etc.,  4. 

^  Weiss,  B. :  Mehr  als  funfzig  Jahre  auf  Chatham  Island,  18. 

^Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bombay  ("J.A.S.B."),  I,  240. 


6        ESSAYS  OF  WILLLVM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

The  Rengmahs  on  the  Assam  hills  attach  to  the  body  a 
tail  of  wood  eighteen  inches  long,  curved  upwards,  which 
they  use  to  wag  defiance  at  an  enemy. ^  Such  people 
evidently  could  never  have  had  much  experience  of  war. 
The  IVIru  on  the  Chittagong  hills  are  peaceable,  timid, 
and  simple;  in  a  quarrel  they  do  not  fight,  but  call  in  an 
exorcist  to  take  the  sense  of  the  spirits  on  the  matter.^ 

Livingstone  says  that  the  tribes  in  the  interior  of  South 
Africa,  where  no  slave  trade  existed,  seldom  had  any  war 
except  about  cattle,  and  some  tribes  refused  to  keep 
cattle  in  order  not  to  offer  temptation.  In  one  case 
only  had  he  heard  of  war  for  any  other  reason;  three 
brothers,  Barolongs,  fought  over  one  woman,  and  their 
tribe  had  remained  divided,  up  to  the  time  of  writing,  into 
three  parties.  During  his  residence  in  the  Bechuana 
country  he  never  saw  unarmed  men  strike  each  other. 
They  quarrel  with  words,  but  generally  both  parties 
bfirst  into  a  laugh  and  that  ends  it.^  By  an  exception 
among  the  Canary  islanders,  the  people  of  Hierro  knew 
no  war  and  had  no  weapons,  although  their  long  leaping- 
poles  could  be  used  as  such  when  occasion  demanded. 

A  Spanish  priest,  writing  an  account,  in  1739,  of  the 
Aurohuacos  of  Colombia,^  says  that  they  have  no  weap- 
ons of  offense  or  defense.  If  two  quarrel  they  go  out  to 
a  big  rock  or  tree  and  each  with  his  staff  beats  the  rock 
or  tree  with  vituperations.  The  one  whose  staff  breaks 
first  is  the  victor;  then  they  embrace  and  return  home 
as  friends.     Even  our  American  Indians,  who  appear  in 

^  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland 
C'J.A.I."),  XI,  197. 

2Lewin,  T.  H.:  Wild  Races  of  South-Eastem  India,  232. 

'Livingstone,  D.:  Missionary  Travels  and  Researches  in  South  Africa,  I, 
232;  II,  503. 

*  American  Anthropologist,  N.  S.,  II,  475. 

^  Ibid.,  N.  S.,  Ill,  612. 


WAR  7 

our  legends  to  be  so  bloodthirsty  and  warlike,  always 
appreciated  the  blessings  of  peace.  Wampum  strings  and 
belts  were  associated  with  peace-pacts  and  with  prayers 
for  peace. 

In  contrast  with  these  cases  we  find  others  of  extreme 
warlikeness  which  account  for  the  current  idea  that 
primitive  men  love  war  and  practice  it  all  the  time. 
But  if  we  examine  the  cases  of  peacefulness  or  unwarlike- 
ness  which  have  been  cited,  we  see  that  only  two  or  three 
seem  to  present  evidence  of  Arcadian  peace  and  "sim- 
plicity, such  as,  in  the  imagination  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury philosophers,  characterized  men  in  a  state  of  nature. 
Probably  if  we  had  fuller  knowledge  these  few  instances 
would  be  much  modified.  What  we  see  is  that  men 
have  always  quarreled.  The  cases  which  have  been 
selected  are  some  of  them  also  those  of  people  who  have 
been  defeated,  broken,  and  cowed  down.  Another  set  of 
examples  consists  of  those  in  which  abstinence  from  war 
is  due  to  cowardice,  and  with  it  go  the  vices  of  cowardice 
—  tyranny  and  cruelty  to  the  weak.  These  cases  are 
calculated  to  delight  the  hearts  of  the  advocates  of 
strenuosity.     TOiat  our  testimonies  have  in  common  is 

tthis:  they  show  that  we  cannot  postulate  a  warlike 
character  or  a  habit  of  fighting  as  a  universal  or  even 
characteristic  trait  of  primitive  man. 

WTien  we  undertake  to  talk  about  primitive  society  we 
should  conceive  of  it  as  consisting  of  petty  groups  scat- 
tered separately  over  a  great  territory.  I  speak  of 
groups  because  I  want  a  term  of  the  widest  significance. 
The  group  may  consist,  as  it  does  amongst  Australians 
and  Bushmen,  of  a  man  with  one  or  possibly  two  wives 
and  their  children,  or  it  may  have  a  few  more  members, 
or  it  may  be  a  village  group  as  in  New  Guinea,  or  a  tribe 
or  part  of  a  tribe  as  amongst  our  own  Indians.     It  is  to 


8        ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

be  observed  that  this  ultimate  unit  is  a  group  and  not  an 
individual.  Every  individual  excludes  every  other  in  the 
competition  of  life  unless  they  can  by  combining  together 
win  more  out  of  nature  by  joint  effort  than  the  sum  of 
what  they  could  win  separately.  This  combination  is 
what  makes  groups  and  brings  about  industrial  organi- 
zation. ^Mien  a  man  and  woman  unite  in  the  most  ele- 
mentary group  known,  they  do  it  for  economic  reasons, 
because  they  can  carry  on  the  struggle  for  existence  better 
together  than  apart.  In  time  this  turns  into  a  kin- 
group,  united  "by  blood."  This  remains  undivided  as 
long  as  its  organization  gives  advantages,  but  breaks  up 
when  it  grows  too  big  for  the  existing  economic  system. 
As  soon  as  it  breaks,  the  fractions  begin  to  compete 
with  each  other.  If  by  greater  culture  a  higher  organiza- 
tion becomes  possible,  two  groups  coalesce  by  intermar- 
riage or  conquest,  competition  gives  way  to  combination 
again,  and  the  bigger  unit  enters  into  competition  with 
other  composite  units.  Thus  at  all  stages  throughout  the 
history  of  civilization  competition  and  combination  for- 
ever alternate  with  each  other. 

These  groups  are  independent  of  each  other,  their  size 
being  determined  by  their  mode  of  life,  because  the  num- 
ber who  can  live  together  economically  is  limited  by  the 
possibilities  of  the  food-quest.  WTien  a  group  outgrows 
this  limit,  it  breaks  up  and  scatters.  The  fact  of  former 
association  is  long  remembered  and  there  is  a  bond  of 
kinship  and  alliance  which  may  at  times  draw  former 
associates  together  again  for  festivals  and  religious  obser- 
vances, but  after  they  separate  the  tendency  is  to  become 
entirely  independent  and  to  fall  under  the  type  just 
described;  viz.,  scattered  groups  each  with  its  individu- 
ality, yet  in  a  certain  neighborhood  to  each  other.  Their 
remoter  relationship  does  not  keep  them  from  quarreling 


WAR  9 

and  fighting.  In  the  book  of  Judges  ^  we  see  cases  of 
war  between  tribes  of  Israel  in  spite  of  the  higher  bond 
which  united  them  with  each  other  and  separated  them 
from  the  Gentiles. 

All  the  members  of  one  group  are  comrades  to  each 
other,  and  have  a  common  interest  against  every  other 
group.  If  we  assume  a  standpoint  in  one  group  we 
may  call  that  one  the  "we-group"  or  the  "in-group"; 
then  every  other  group  is  to  us  an  "others-group"  or  an 
"out-group."  The  sentiment  which  prevails  inside  the 
"we-group,"  between  its  members,  is  that  of  peace  and 
cooperation;  the  sentiment  which  prevails  inside  of  a 
group  towards  all  outsiders  is  that  of  hostility  and  war. 
These  two  sentiments  are  perfectly  consistent  with  each 
other;  in  fact,  they  necessarily  complement  each  other. 
Let  us  see  why  that  is  so. 

^yVar  arises  from  the  competition  of  life,  not  from  the 
struggle  for  existence.  In  the  struggle  for  existence  a 
man  is  wrestling  with  nature  to  extort  from  her  the  means 
of  subsistence.  It  is  when  two  men  are  striving  side  by 
side  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  to  extort  from  nature 
the  supplies  they  need,  that  they  come  into  rivalry  and 
a  collision  of  interest  with  each  other  takes  place.  This 
collision  may  be  light  and  unimportant,  if  the  supplies 
are  large  and  the  number  of  men  small,  or  it  may  be 
harsh  and  violent,  if  there  are  many  men  striving  for  a 
small  supply.  This  collision  we  call  the  competition  of 
life.  Of  course  men  are  in  the  competition  of  life  with 
beasts,  reptiles,  insects,  and  plants  —  in  short,  with  all 
organic  forms;  we  will,  however,  confine  our  attention 
to  men.  The  greater  or  less  intensity  of  the  competition 
of  life  is  a  fundamental  condition  of  human  existence, 
and  the  competition  arises  between  those  ultimate  unit 

1  Chapters  12,  20. 


10       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

groups  which  I  have  described.  The  members  of  the 
unit  group  work  together.  The  Australian  or  Bushman 
hunter  goes  abroad  to  seek  meat  food,  while  the  woman 
stays  by  the  fire  at  a  trysting  place,  with  the  children, 
and  collects  plant  food.  They  cooperate  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence,  and  the  size  of  the  group  is  fixed  by 
the  number  who  can  work  together  to  the  greatest  advan- 
tage under  their  mode  of  life.  Such  a  group,  therefore, 
has  a  common  interest.  It  must  have  control  of  a  cer- 
tain area  of  land;  hence  it  comes  into  collision  of  interest 
with  every  other  group.  The  competition  of  life,  there- 
fore, arises  between  groups,  not  between  individuals,  and 
we  see  that  the  members  of  the  in-group  are  allies  and 
joint-partners  in  one  interest  while  they  are  brought  into 
antagonism  of  interest  with  all  outsiders.  It  is  the 
competition  of  life,  therefore,  v/hich  makes  war,  and  that 
is  why  war  always  has  existed  and  always  will.  It  is  in 
the  conditions  of  human  existence.  In  the  cases  which 
have  been  cited  of  nature  peoples  who  have  no  war,  we 
have  heard  mention  already  of  division  of  hunting  grounds 
and  of  quarrels  which  arise  about  them.  Wlierever  there 
is  no  war,  there  we  find  that  there  is  no-  crowding,  as 
among  the  scattered  Eskimo,  or  that,  after  long  fighting, 
treaties  and  agreements  have  been  made  to  cover  all 
relations  of  interest  between  the  groups.  These  w^e  call 
peace-pacts,  and  it  is  evident  that  they  consist  in  conven- 
tional agreements  creating  some  combination  between 
the  groups  which  are  parties  to  the  agreement. 

Each  group  must  regard  every  other  as  a  possible 
enemy  on  account  of  the  antagonism  of  interests,  and  so 
it  views  every  other  group  with  suspicion  and  distrust, 
although  actual  hostilities  occur  only  on  specific  occasion. 
Every  member  of  another  group  is  a  stranger;  he  may 
be  admitted  as  a  guest,  in  which  case  rights  and  security 


WAR  11 

are  granted  him,  but  if  not  so  admitted  he  is  an  enemy. 
We  can  now  see  why  the  sentiments  of  peace  and  cooper- 
ation inside  are  complementary  to  sentiments  of  hos- 
tihty  outside.  It  is  because  any  group,  in  order  to  be 
strong  against  an  outside  enemy,  must  be  well  disci- 
plined, harmonious,  and  peaceful  inside;  in  other  words, 

because  discord  inside  would  cause  defeat  in  battle  with 

* 

another  group.  Therefore  the  same  conditions  which 
made  men  warlike  against  outsiders  made  them  yield  to 
the  control  of  chiefs,  submit  to  discipline,  obey  law,  cul- 
tivate peace,  and  create  institutions  inside.  The  notion 
of  rights  grows  up  in  the  in-group  from  the  usages  estab- 
lished there  securing  peace.  There  was  a  double  educa- 
tion, at  the  same  time,  out  of  the  same  facts  and  relations. 
It  is  no  paradox  at  all  to  say  that  peace  makes  war  and 
that  war  makes  peace.  There  are  two  codes  of  morals 
and  two  sets  of  mores,  one  for  comrades  inside  and  the 
other  for  strangers  outside,  and  they  arise  from  the  same 
interests.  Against  outsiders  it  was  meritorious  to  kill, 
plunder,  practice  blood  revenge,  and  to  steal  women  and 
slaves;  but  inside  none  of  these  things  could  be  allowed 
because  they  would  produce  discord  and  weakness. 
Hence,  in  the  in-group,  law  (under  the  forms  of  custom 
and  taboo)  and  institutions  had  to  take  the  place  of  force. 
Every  group  was  a  peace-group  inside  and  the  peace  was 
sanctioned  by  the  ghosts  of  the  ancestors  who  had 
handed  down  the  customs  and  taboos.  Against  out- 
siders religion  sanctioned  and  encouraged  war;  for  the 
ghosts  of  the  ancestors,  or  the  gods,  would  rejoice  to  see 
their  posterity  and  worshipers  once  more  defeat,  slay, 
plunder,  and  enslave  the  ancient  enemy. 

The  Eskimos  of  Bering  Strait  think  it  wrong  to  steal 
from  people  in  the  same  village  or  tribe;  a  thief  is  publicly 
reproached  and  forced  to  return  the  thing  stolen.     But  to 


12       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

steal  from  an  outsider  is  not  wrong  unless  it  brings  harm 
on  one's  own  tribe. ^  Strabo^  says  of  the  Scythians  that 
they  were  just  and  kind  to  each  other,  but  very  sav- 
age towards  all  outsiders.  The  sentiment  of  cohesion, 
internal  comradeship,  and  devotion  to  the  in-group,  which 
carries  with  it  a  sense  of  superiority  to  any  out-group  and 
readiness  to  defend  the  interests  of  the  in-group  against 
the  out-group,  is  technically  knowm  as  ethnocentrism.  It 
is  really  the  sentiment  of  patriotism  in  all  its  philosophic 
fullness;  that  is,  both  in  its  rationality  and  in  its  extrava- 
gant exaggeration.  The  Mohaves  and  the  Seri  of  south- 
ern California  will  have  no  relations  of  marriage  or  trade 
with  any  other  people;  they  think  themselves  superior. 
The  Mohaves  are  wild  and  barbarous  and  the  Seri  are 
on  a  lower  grade  of  civilization  than  any  other  tribe  in 
America.  Therefore,  we  see  that  ethnocentrism  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  relative  grade  of  civilization  of  any 
people.  The  Seri  think  that  "the  brightest  virtue  is  the 
shedding  of  alien  blood,  while  the  blackest  crime  in  their 
calendar  is  alien  conjugal  union."  ^  Perhaps  nine-tenths 
of  all  the  names  given  by  savage  tribes  to  themselves 
mean  "Men,"  "The  Only  Men,"  or  "Men  of  Men"; 
that  is,  We  are  men,  the  rest  are  sometliing  else.  A 
recent  etymology  of  the  word  Iroquois  makes  it  mean 
"I  am  the  real  man."  ^  In  general  Indians  held  that 
they  were  a  favored  race,  due  to  a  special  creation.^ 
Nansen^  gives  a  letter  WTitten  by  an  Eskimo  in  1756 
when  he  heard  of  the  war  between  England  and  France. 
He  burst  into  a  rhapsody  about  Greenland.  "Your 
unfruitfulness  makes  us  happy  and  saves  us  from  moles- 

1  Bureau  of  American  Ethnology,  18,  I,  293.  2  390,  302. 

3  Bur.  Eth.,  17,  I,  11;  Am.  Anth.,  N.  S.,  IV,  279. 

4  Am.  Anth.,  N.  S.,  IV,  558. 

6  Bur.  Eth.,  VIII,  36.  «  Eskimo  Life,  180. 


WAR  13 

tation."  The  writer  was  surprised  that  the  Christians 
had  not  learned  better  manners  amongst  the  Eskimo, 
and  he  proposed  to  send  missionaries  to  them.  A  trav- 
eler in  Formosa  says  that  the  Formosans  thought  for- 
eigners barbarians,  "civilization  being  solely  within  the 
dominion  of  the  Celestial  Emperor.  All  the  rest  of  the 
world  —  if  there  was  any  poor  remainder  —  was  be- 
nighted, and  but  the  home  of  'barbarians,'  not  'men.'"  ^ 
This  is  the  language  of  ethnocentrism;  it  may  be  read 
in  the  newspapers  of  any  civilized  country  to-day. 

We  find  then  that  there  are  two  sentiments  in  the  minds 
of  the  same  men  at  the  same  time.  These  have  been 
called  militancy  and  industrialism.  The  latter  term  does 
not  seem  to  be  a  good  one  and  it  is  not  apt  until  we 
reach  high  civilization;  what  we  want  is  a  term  to  express 
the  peace  sentiment  in  antithesis  to  militancy,  but  indus- 
trialism has  obtained  currency  and  it  has  this  much  justi- 
fication, even  for  savage  life,  that,  inside  the  group,  the 
needs  of  life  must  be  provided  for  by  productive  labor. 
Generally  that  is  left  to  the  women  and  the  men  practice 
militarism. 

It  would  not  be  possible  for  neighboring  groups  to 
remain  really  isolated  from  each  other.  One  has  in  its 
territory  stone  or  salt,  water  or  fuel,  limited  fruits,  melons, 
nuts,  fish,  or  perhaps  other  natural  materials  which  the 
others  need.  They  also  take  wives  from  each  other,  gen- 
erally, but  not  always.  Hence  arise  treaties  of  commercium 
and  connuhium,  which  bring  about  a  middle  state  of  things 
between  war  and  peace.  These  treaties  are  the  origin  of 
international  law.  A  comparison  of  modern  municipal 
and  international  law  will  show  that  the  difference  be- 
tween the  relations  of  members  of  the  in-group  with  each 
other,  and  of  the  groups  with  each  other,  still  exists. 

*  Pickering,  W.  A. :  Pioneering  in  Formosa,  136. 


14       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

If  now  we  turn  back  to  the  question  with  which  I 
started,  whether  men  began  in  a  state  of  peace  or  a  state 
of  vv^ar,  we  see  the  answer.  They  began  with  both  to- 
gether. Which  preponderated  is  a  question  of  the  inten- 
sity of  the  competition  of  Hfe  at  the  time.  When  that 
competition  was  intense,  war  was  frequent  and  fierce,  the 
weaker  were  exterminated  or  absorbed  by  the  stronger, 
the  internal  discipHne  of  the  conquerors  became  stronger, 
chiefs  got  more  absolute  power,  laws  became  more  strin- 
gent, religious  observances  won  greater  authority,  and  so 
the  whole  societal  system  was  more  firmly  integrated. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  there  were  no  close  or  power- 
ful neighbors,  there  was  little  or  no  war,  the  internal 
organization  remained  lax  and  feeble,  chiefs  had  little 
power,  and  a  societal  system  scarcely  existed. 

The  four  great  motives  which  move  men  to  social 
activity  are  hunger,  love,  vanity,  and  fear  of  superior 
powers.  If  we  search  out  the  causes  which  have  moved 
men  to  war  we  find  them  under  each  of  these  motives  or 
interests.  Men  have  fought  for  hunting  grounds,  for 
supplies  which  are  locally  limited  and  may  be  monopo- 
lized, for  commerce,  for  slaves,  and  probably  also  for 
human  flesh.  These  motives  come  under  hunger,  or  the 
food-quest,  or  more  widely  under  the  economic  effort  to 
win  subsistence.  They  have  fought  for  and  on  account 
of  women,  which  we  must  put  partly  under  love,  although 
the  women  were  wanted  chiefly  as  laborers  and  so,  along 
with  the  slaves,  would  come  under  the  former  head. 
They  have  fought  to  win  heads,  or  scalps,  or  other 
trophies,  and  for  honor  or  dignity,  or  purely  for  glory; 
this  comes  under  the  operation  of  vanity.  They  have 
fought  for  blood  revenge,  to  prevent  or  punish  sorcery, 
and  to  please  their  gods;  these  motives  belong  under 
the  fear  of  superior  powers.     It  was  reserved  for  modern 


WAR  15 

civilized  men  to  fight  on  account  of  differences  of  religion, 
and  from  this  motive  the  fiercest  and  most  persistent 
wars  have  been  waged. 

Is  there  anything  grand  or  noble  in  any  of  these  motives 
of  war?  Not  a  bit.  But  we  must  remember  that  the 
motives  from  which  men  act  have  nothing  at  all  to  do 
with  the  consequences  of  their  action.  Where  will  you 
find  in  history  a  case  of  a  great  purpose  rationally  adopted 
by  a  great  society  and  carried  through  to  the  intended 
result  and  then  followed  by  the  expected  consequences  in 
the  way  of  social  advantage .^^  You  can  find  no  such  thing. 
Men  act  from  immediate  and  interested  motives  like  these 
for  which  they  have  waged  war,  and  the  consequences 
come  out  of  the  forces  which  are  set  loose.  The  conse- 
quences may  be  advantageous  or  disadvantageous  to  men. 
The  story  of  these  acts  and  consequences  makes  up 
human  history.  So  it  has  been  with  war.  While  men 
were  fighting  for  glory  and  greed,  for  revenge  and  super- 
stition, they  were  building  human  society.  They  were 
acquiring  discipline  and  cohesion;  they  were  learning  coop- 
eration, perseverance,  fortitude,  and  patience.  Those  are 
not  savage  virtues;  they  are  products  of  education.  War 
forms  larger  social  units  and  produces  states;  of  the  North 
American  Indians,  those  had  the  intensest  feeling  of 
unity  who  were  the  most  warlike.^  The  Netherlands  form 
a  striking  example  in  modern  history  of  the  weakness  of 
a  state  which  is  internally  divided;  the  best  historian 
of  Dutch  civilization  tells  us  that  the  internal  disintegra- 
tion was  always  greatest  in  times  of  truce  or  of  peace. ^ 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Germans  of  to-day  owe 
their  preeminence  in  industry  and  science  to  the  fact 

1  Am.  Anth.,  N.  S.,  IV,  279. 

2  Van  Diiyl,  C.  F.:  Overzicht  der  Beschavingsgeschiedenis  van  het  Neder- 
landsche  Volk,  190. 


16       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

that  they  are  a  highly  disciphned  nation.  A  Portuguese 
sociologist  says  that  "War  is  the  living  fountain  from 
which  flows  the  entire  society."  ^  If  we  fix  our  minds 
on  the  organic  growth  and  organization  of  society,  this 
assertion  is  not  exaggerated.  An  American  sociologist^ 
says  that  "in  spite  of  the  countless  miseries  which  follow 
in  its  train,  war  has  probably  been  the  highest  stimulus 
to  racial  progress.  It  is  the  most  potent  excitant  known 
to  all  the  faculties."  The  great  conquests  have  de- 
stroyed what  was  effete  and  opened  the  w^ay  for  what  was 
viable.  WTiat  appalls  us,  however,  is  the  frightful  waste 
of  this  process  of  evolution  by  war  —  waste  of  life  and 
waste  of  capital.  It  is  this  waste  which  has  made  the 
evolution  of  civilization  so  slow. 

Here,  then,  let  us  turn  back  and  see  how  the  peace- 
element  develops  alongside  the  war-element.  We  shall 
find  that  peace-rules  and  peace-institutions  have  been 
established,  from  the  earliest  civilization,  even  for  the 
relations  of  groups  with  each  other.  House-peace  is  per- 
haps the  simplest  form.  The  nature-people  very  often 
bury  a  man  under  his  own  fireplace,  and  from  this  usage 
radiate  various  customs,  all  of  which  go  to  associate  the 
ghosts  of  the  dead  with  the  hearthstone  of  the  living. 
It  follows  that  quarreling,  brawling,  or  violence  near  the 
hearth  is  an  insult  to  the  ghosts.  Hence  arises  a  notion 
of  religious  sacredness  about  the  hearth  an  atmosphere 
of  peace  is  created,  and  the  women  who  live  in  the 
house  and  work  at  the  hearth  profit  by  it.  The  house- 
holder has  a  dignity  and  prerogative  in  his  house,  how- 
ever humble  his  social  position  may  be;  hence  the  maxim 
that  a  man's  house  is  his  castle  goes  back  to  the  begin- 
ning of  civilization.     It  may  be  only  a  wind-shelter,  but 

^Martins,  J.  P.  Oliveira:  As  Ragas  Humanas,  etc.,  II,  55. 
*  Brinton,  D.  G. :  Races  and  Peoples,  76. 


WAR  17 

the  ghosts  protect  it;  and  any  stranger,  fugitive,  sup- 
phant,  even  an  enemy,  if  admitted,  comes  under  the  house 
protection  and  hospitahty  while  there.  As  the  house 
becomes  larger  and  better  the  peace-taboo  extends  from 
the  fireplace  to  the  whole  house  and  then  to  the  yard  or 
enclosure.     This  is  the  house-peace. 

If  any  group  which  possesses  deposits  of  salt,  flint- 
stone  fit  for  implements,  pipe-stone,  water  supply,  or 
special  foods  should  try  to  prevent  others  from  having 
access  to  the  same,  all  others  would  join  in  war  against 
that  one  until  an  agreement  was  made  and  established 
by  usage.  This  agreement  is  either  one  of  peaceful 
access  to  natural  supplies  or  one  of  trade.  Tribes  also 
agree  to  take  wives  from  each  other.  We  often  have 
reason  to  be  astonished  at  the  institution-making  power 
of  nature-men  when  disagreeable  experience  has  forced 
them  to  find  relief.  The  Tubu  of  the  Sahara  are  warlike 
and  distrustful  even  of  each  other  to  such  an  extent  that 
they  scarcely  form  a  society;  even  in  their  villages  they 
quarrel  and  fight.  It  is  a  very  noteworthy  feature  that 
these  people  have  no  notion  of  rights.  It  is  the  in- 
group  as  a  peace-group  which  is  the  school  of  rights; 
as  we  have  seen,  there  can  be  peace  and  order  inside  only 
by  law  (using  this  term  in  its  broadest  sense) ;  but  a  law 
creates  and  enforces  rights.  Now  these  Tubu  have  been 
forced  to  make  a  law  that  inside  the  village  no  weapons 
may  be  worn,^  so  that  here  already  we  find  an  institu- 
tional arrangement  to  limit  war  likeness.  When  Nachti- 
gal,  visiting  the  Tubu,  complained  of  their  ill  usage  of 
himself  and  threatened  to  go  away,  they  pointed  out  to 
him  that  as  soon  as  he  had  left  their  territory  he  would 
be  at  their  mercy. ^  This  shows  that  even  they  had  an 
idea  of  some  rights  of  a  guest  inside  their  group  as  com- 

1  Nachtigal,  G.:  Sahara  und  Sudan,  I,  439.  ^  /j^^.^  i^  276. 


18       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

pared  with  his  status  outside,  when  he  would  be  protected 
by  nothing.  The  Beduin  have  the  same  notion.  They 
are  ruthless  robbers  and  murderers,  but  a  guest  in  the 
tent  is  perfectly  safe  and  entitled  to  their  best  hospital- 
ity. When  he  leaves  it  he  is  fair  game,  whether  enemy, 
friend,  or  neighbor.^ 

The  West- Australians  have  a  usage  that  any  man  who 
has  committed  a  wrong  according  to  their  code  must  sub- 
mit to  a  flight  of  spears  from  all  who  think  themselves 
aggrieved,  or  he  must  allow  a  spear  to  be  thrust  through 
his  leg  or  arm.  There  is  a  tarijff  of  wounds  as  penalties 
for  all  common  crimes. ^  W^e  understand  that  this  is  an 
in-group  usage.  It  is  a  common  custom  in  Australia  that 
a  man  who  has  stolen  a  wife  from  an  out-group  must  sub- 
mit to  a  flight  of  spears  from  her  group-comrades;  this 
is  now  only  a  ceremony,  but  it  is  a  peace-institution 
which  has  set  aside  old  warfare  on  account  of  stolen 
women.  As  we  have  seen,  the  Australians  live  in  very 
small  groups,  but  they  assemble  from  time  to  time  in 
large  kin-groups  for  purposes  of  festivals  of  a  religious 
character.  The  kin-groups  are  not  peace-groups,^  be- 
cause they  are  loose  and  have  no  common  life.  At  the 
assemblies  all  the  sacred  objects  are  brought  into  the 
ceremonial  ground,  but  on  account  of  the  danger  of 
quarrels,  no  display  of  arms  is  allowed  anywhere  near 
the  sacred  objects.'*  Bearers  of  messages  from  one  tribe 
to  another  are  regarded  as  under  a  peace-taboo  in  eastern 
Australia;  women  are  under  a  peace-taboo  and  hence 
are  employed  as  ambassadors  to  arrange  disputes  between 
tribes.     After  a  quarrel  there  is  a  corroboree,  to  make  and 

*  Burchardt,  J.  L.:  Notes  on  the  Bedouins,  etc.,  90. 

2  Grey,  G.:  Journals  of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  North- West  and 
Western  Australia,  II,  243. 

'  Curr:  Australian  Race,  I,  69. 

*  Spencer,  B.,  and  Gillen,  F.  J.:  Native  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  135. 


WAR  19 

confirm  peace. ^  These  usages  are  institutional.  They 
are  positive  rules  of  an  arbitrary  character,  depending 
upon  agreement  and  usage,  but  are  devised  to  satisfy 
expediency.  In  Queensland  no  fighting  at  all  is  allowed 
at  night  in  camp;  those  who  want  to  fight  must  go 
outside,  and  after  a  fight  the  victor  must  show  to  his  com- 
rades that  he  had  a  real  grievance.  If  he  does  not  con- 
vince them  of  this  they  force  him  to  submit  to  the  same 
mutilation  from  his  victim  that  he  has  inflicted.  The 
women  fight  with  their  yam-sticks,  which  are  about  four 
feet  long.  One  woman  allows  the  other  to  strike  her 
on  the  head;  the  second  must  then  submit  to  a  blow; 
thus  they  go  on  until  one  does  not  want  any  more.^ 
What  we  have  to  notice  here  is  that  the  fight,  inside  the 
group,  is  under  regulations,  which  fact  makes  it  institu- 
tional. The  duel  is  a  similar  case  of  a  conventionalized 
fight  in  the  midst  of  a  peaceful  civil  order.  In  all  these 
cases  we  see  that  war  is  admitted  inside  of  a  peace-group 
when  individuals  are  wronged  or  offended  by  comrades, 
but  only  in  conventionalized  and  regulated  form,  so  that 
it  is  a  kind  of  lawful  war. 

We  also  find  war  between  groups  under  some  regula- 
tion and  conventionalization  when  there  is  a  bond  of 
kinship  or  religion  uniting  the  two  groups.  It  appears 
that  this  is  the  origin  of  the  rules  of  war  by  which  its 
horrors  are  reduced.  On  the  island  of  Tanna  in  the  New 
Hebrides  the  eight  thousand  inhabitants  are  divided  into 
two  groups,  one  at  each  end  of  the  island,  and  each  group 
is  subdivided  into  villages.  If  two  villages  in  the  same 
division  fight,  as  they  often  do,  the  fighting  is  not  intense 

^  Mathews,  R.  H. :  Message-sticks  used  by  the  Aborigines  of  AustraHa,  in 
Am.  Anth.,  X,  290;  Smyth,  R.  B.:  Aborigines  of  Victoria,  I,  165,  181;  Curr, 
Australian  Race,  I,  92. 

2  Roth,  W.  E. :  Ethnological  Studies  among  the  North- West- Central  Queens- 
land Aborigines,  141. 


20       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  there  is  no  cannibalism;  but  between  the  two  big 
divisions  there  is  blood  revenge,  and  if  they  fight  there  is 
no  limit  to  the  ferocity,  cannibalism  being  then  practiced.^ 
On  the  Mortlock  Islands  when  two  tribes  go  to  w^ar  each 
warrior  must  select  as  his  antagonist  on  the  other  side 
one  who  is  not  in  the  same  kin-group  with  himself. ^ 
Amongst  certain  Sumatrans  if  a  man  of  one  village  has 
a  grievance  against  a  man  of  another,  the  men  of  the 
former  go  into  the  fields  of  the  other,  where  they  are 
met  by  the  local  chief,  who  asks  their  errand.  They 
answer  that  they  have  come  to  destroy  the  plantation 
of  the  man  in  the  village  who  has  injured  a  man  of 
theirs.  The  chief  admits  that  this  is  just,  but  proposes 
to  avoid  violence;  so  he  brings  to  them  fruit  from  the 
plantation  of  the  offender  and,  if  the  offense  was  great, 
he  allows  them  to  destroy  a  certain  number  of  trees  on  it. 
They  also  burn  down  the  offender's  house  "ceremonially" 
—  a  little  hut  is  built  of  light  material  on  his  field  and 
with  triumphant  cries  is  set  on  fire  by  the  offended  party. 
Generally  an  agreement  is  reached,  but  if  not,  long  hos- 
tilities endure  between  tw^o  neighboring  villages.^ 

The  Christian  states  have  always  professed  to  moderate 
somewhat  the  horrors  of  war  when  they  went  to  fighting 
with  each  other,  and  so  we  have  laws  of  war  which  are 
good  between  the  states  agreeing  to  them,  but  not  with 
outsiders.  This  makes  a  limited  peace-group  of  all  the 
states  w^hich  unite  now  to  make  international  law.  Let  us 
follow  these  peace-institutions  up  into  higher  civilization. 

The  Scandinavian  people  spread  in  small  bodies  over 
their  territor3%  and  these  bodies  often  engaged  in  war  with 
each  other.     They  had  a  common  sanctuary  at  Upsala  at 

*  Australian  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  1892,  6-18. 
^  Finsch,  O. :  Ethnologiscbe  Erfahrungen  und  Belegstiicke  aus  der  SUdsee, 
III,  311. 

'  Snouck-Hurgronje,  C.  S.:  De  Atjehers,  I,  81-83. 


WAR  21 

which  there  were  annual  festivals.  This  religious  bond 
kept  up  a  certain  sense  of  national  unity,  which,  however, 
has  never  produced  national  sympathy.  At  the  festivals  at 
Upsala  peace  was  enforced  for  the  time  and  place  ^ ;  dis- 
putes were  settled  and  fairs  held,  and  th^re  were  also  feasts 
and  conferences.  The  Swedes  in  the  thirteenth  century 
formed  kin-groups  which  adopted  rules  of  mutual  succor 
and  defense.^  The  dwellings  of  kings  also  came  to  have 
in  so  far  the  character  of  sanctuaries  that  peace  was 
maintained  around  them.^  The  ancient  Germans  main- 
tained by  law  and  severe  penalties  peace  for  women  as  to 
person  and  property;  the  penalties  for  wrong  to  a  woman 
varied  in  the  laws  of  the  different  German  nations,  but 
were  two  or  three  times  as  great  as  for  wrongs  to  men.^ 
The  house-peace  was  also  very  fully  developed  in  German 
law.^  The  Peace  of  God  was  perhaps  the  most  remark- 
able case  in  history  of  a  law  to  establish  a  time-taboo 
against  war  and  violence.  In  the  tenth  century  the 
church  tried  to  curb  the  robber  barons  and  to  protect 
merchants;  the  attempts  were  often  repeated  with  little 
result,  but  the  "Truce  of  God"  was  at  last  established 
in  1041  by  the  Bishop  of  Aries  and  the  Abbot  of  Cluny, 
and  it  won  some  acceptance  throughout  France.  There 
was  to  be  no  fighting  between  Wednesday  evening  and 
Monday  morning;  later  these  limits  were  changed.^ 
No  such  law  was  ever  obeyed  with  any  precision  and  it 
never  became  a  custom,  much  less  an  institution,  but  it 
had  some  influence.  As  the  kings  gained  real  power  and 
prestige  in  the  feudal  states  they  made  the  king's  peace 

1  Geijer,  E.  G.:  Svenska  Folkets  Historia,  I,  12,  112. 

2  Montelius,  O. :  Sveriges  Historia,  I,  461. 

3  Folklore,  1900,  285. 

*  Stammler,  C:  Ueber  die  Stellung  der  Frauen  im  alten  deutschen  Recht,  9. 

^  Osenbriiggen,  E.:  Der  Hausfrieden. 

^Van  Duyl,  C.  F.:  Beschavingsgeschiedenis,  etc.,  110. 


22       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHA]M  SU^NIXER 

a  great  reality;  it  went  with  the  development  of  the 
modern  state.  The  king's  peace  was  a  name  for  a  cen- 
tral civil  authority  which  could  put  down  all  private  war 
and  violations  of  public  order  and  establish  a  peace- 
group  over  a  great  extent  of  territory,  within  which 
rights,  law,  and  civil  authority  should  be  secured  by  com- 
petent tribunals.  In  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the 
German  nation  the  public  general  peace  of  the  empire 
was  introduced  in  1495,  but  the  emperors  never  had  the 
means  to  enforce  it,  and  it  did  not  exist  until  1873.  We 
can  see  how  the  king's  peace  grew  by  the  following  case: 
Canute  the  Dane  made  a  law  in  England  that,  if  any 
unknown  man  was  found  dead,  he  should  be  assumed 
to  be  a  Dane  and  a  special  tax,  called  murdrum,  should 
be  paid  for  him  to  the  king.  William  the  Conqueror 
followed  this  example,  only  the  unknown  man  was  assumed 
to  be  a  Norman;  if  it  could  be  proved  that  he  was  an 
Englishman  ("proving  his  Englishry")  then  the  murderer 
or  the  hundred  had  nothing  to  pay  to  the  king  but  only 
the  legal  compensation  to  the  family  of  the  deceased, 
if  he  had  one.^  This  means  that  the  king  first  extended 
his  peace  over  his  own  countrymen  by  a  special  penalty 
on  the  murder  of  one  of  them,  while  Englishmen  were 
left  only  under  the  old  law  of  composition  for  blood 
revenge;  but  in  time  equal  protection  was  extended  to 
all  his  subjects.  Again,  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest  all 
crimes  committed  on  the  roads  which  ran  through  a  city 
(Canterbury,  for  instance)  were  crimes  against  the  king's 
peace — which  also  extended  one  league,  three  perches, 
and  three  feet  beyond  the  city  gate.  This  means  that 
the  high  roads  which  ran  through  a  towTi  were  first 
brought  under  the  king's  peace,  and  this  peace  also 
extended  beyond  the  royal  burgh  for  an  extent  which 

1  Inderwick,  F.  A.:  The  King's  Peace,  27. 


WAR  23 

was  measured  with  droll  accuracy.  What  was  a  crime 
elsewhere  was  a  greater  crime  there,  and  what  was  not 
a  crime  elsewhere  might  be  a  crime  there.  King  Edmund 
forbade  blood  revenge  in  his  burgh^ ;  that  is,  he  delimited 
an  in-group  in  which  there  must  be  law  and  an  adminis- 
tration of  justice  by  his  tribunal;  Jews  and  merchants 
bought  the  protection  of  the  king's  peace  throughout 
his  realm.  From  this  germ  grew  up  the  state  as  a  peace- 
group  and  the  king's  peace  as  the  law  of  the  land;  we 
Americans  call  it  the  peace  of  the  people. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  examples  of  a  peace- 
group  which  could  be  mentioned  is  the  League  of  the 
Iroquois  which  was  formed  in  the  sixteenth  century; 
it  deserves  to  be  classed  here  with  the  peace-institutions 
of  civilized  states.  This  league  was  a  confederation  of 
five,  afterwards  six  tribes  of  Indians,  to  maintain  peace. 
By  Indian  usage  blood  revenge  was  a  duty;  but  the 
Iroquois  confederation  put  a  stop  to  this,  as  between  its 
members,  by  substituting  laws  and  civil  authority.  It 
was,  for  its  stage,  fully  as  marvelous  a  production  of 
statesmanship  as  are  these  United  States  —  themselves 
a  great  peace-confederation.  Compared  with  Algonkins 
and  Sioux  the  Iroquois  were  an  industrial  society.  They 
tried  to  force  others  to  join  the  confederacy  —  that  is, 
to  come  into  the  peace-pact  or  to  make  an  alliance  with 
it;  if  they  would  do  neither,  war  arose  and  the  outside 
people  was  either  exterminated  or  absorbed.^  Hiawatha 
was  the  culture-hero  to  whom  the  formation  of  the  league 
was  attributed  The  constitution  was  held  in  memory 
by  strings  of  wampum,  and  at  annual  festivals  there  were 
confessions  and  exhortations.     The  duties  inculcated  were 

^  Maitland,  F.-W.:  Domesday  Book  and  Beyond,  184. 

^  Hale,  H. :  The  Iroquois  Book  of  Rites  (in  Brinton,  D.  G. :  Library  of  Abo- 
riginal American  Literature,  No.  II),  68,  70,  92;  Morgan,  L.  H.:  League  of  the 
Iroquois,  91. 


24       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

those  of  a  warrior  towards  outsiders  and  of  tribal  brother- 
hood towards  insiders.  "The  duty  of  Hving  in  harmony 
and  peace,  of  avoiding  evil-speaking,  of  kindness  to  the 
orphan,  of  charity  to  the  needy  and  of  hospitahty  to  all, 
would  be  among  the  prominent  topics  brought  under 
consideration"  at  the  annual  assemblies.^ 

We  have  now  found  a  peace  of  the  house,  of  the  sanc- 
tuary, of  religion,  of  the  market,  of  women,  of  the  popular 
assembly,  and  of  the  king,  all  of  which  were  legal  and 
institutional  checks  upon  war  and  an  introduction  of 
rational  and  moral  methods  in  the  place  of  force.  Let 
us  see  next  what  has  been  the  relation  between  religion 
on  the  one  side  and  peace  or  war  on  the  other. 

Those  who  perform  the  rites  of  worship  towards  the 
same  ancestors  or  the  same  gods  come  into  the  same  cult- 
group,  but  no  religion  has  ever  succeeded  in  making  its 
cult-group  into  a  peace-group,  although  they  all  try  to 
do  it.  The  salutation  of  members  of  a  cult-group  to 
each  other  is  very  generally  "Peace,"  or  something 
equivalent.  Quakers  call  themselves  "Friends"  and 
alwavs  have  a  closer  bond  to  each  other  than  to  the 
outside  world.  Such  a  peace-group  is  only  an  ideal  for 
all  who  profess  the  same  religion;  in  most  of  the  great 
religions  down  to  the  seventeenth  century,  dissenters  or 
heretics  were  always  treated  with  great  severity,  because 
it  was  thought  that  they  would  bring  dovm.  the  wrath 
of  the  ghost  or  the  god  not  only  on  themselves  but  also 
on  the  whole  community.  The  New  England  Puritans 
had  this  notion  that  the  sins  of  some  would  bring  down 
the  wrath  of  God  on  the  whole.  Religion  has  always 
intensified  ethnocentrism;  the  adherents  of  a  religion 
always  think  themselves  the  chosen  people  or  else  they 

^Morgan,  L.  II.:  League  of  the  Iroquois,  190;  Hale,  H.:  Iroquois  Book  of 
Rites,  32. 


WAR  25 

think  that  their  god  is  superior  to  all  others,  which 
amounts  to  the  same  thing.  The  Jews  looked  down  upon 
all  non-Jews  as  Gentiles;  the  Mohammedans  despise  all 
infidels  —  their  attitude  towards  non-Mussulmans  is  one 
leading  to  aggression,  plunder,  and  annihilation.  The 
Greeks  looked  down  on  all  non-Greeks  as  barbarians, 
but  in  their  case  the  sentiment  was  only  partly  religious ; 
they  themselves  were  never  united  by  their  own  religion. 
In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  when  Moham- 
medanism threatened  to  overwhelm  Christendom,  Latin 
Christians  were  inflamed  with  greater  rage  against  Greek 
Christians  than  against  Mohammedans.  Nicholas  V  in 
1452  gave  to  Alfonso  V  of  Portugal  authority  to  subjugate 
any  non-Christians,  having  in  view  especially  people  of 
the  west  coast  of  Africa,  and  to  reduce  them  to  servitude 
(illorum  personas  m  servitutem),  which  probably  did  not 
mean  slavery,  but  subjection. ^  The  Spaniards  and  Portu- 
guese of  the  sixteenth  century  treated  all  aborigines  with 
ruthlessness  because  the  aborigines  were  outside  of 
Christianity  and  entitled  to  no  rights  or  consideration. 
When  the  American  colonies  revolted,  the  English  were 
amazed  that  the  colonists  could  ally  themselves  with 
Frenchmen  against  the  mother-country,  although  the 
French  were  Roman  Catholics  in  religion,  absolutists 
in  the  state,  and  of  an  alien  nationality.  Buddhism  is 
characterized  by  a  pervading  peacefulness,  but  no  re- 
ligion has  ever  kept  its  adherents  from  fighting  each 
other.  The  instances  which  have  been  cited  suffice  to 
show  that  religion  has  been  quite  as  much  a  stimulus  to 
war  as  to  peace;  and  religious  wars  are  proverbial  for 
ruthlessness  and  ferocity. 

Christianity  has  always  contained  an  ideal  of  itself 
as  a  peace-group.     The  mediseval  church  tried  to  unite 

*Raynaldus,  O.:  Annales  Ecclesiasticae,  etc.,  18,  423. 


26         ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

all  Christendom  into  a  cult-  and  peace-group  which  should 
reach  over  all  the  disintegration  and  war  of  the  feudal 
period.  This  was  the  sense  of  mediaeval  Catholicity. 
Churches,  convents,  and  ecclesiastical  persons  were  put 
under  a  peace-taboo.  The  church,  however,  at  the  same 
time,  entered  into  an  alliance  with  the  feudal  nobles 
and  adopted  militant  methods;  heretics  were  dealt  with 
as  outside  the  fold.  The  modern  state,  as  it  began 
to  take  definite  form,  entered  into  a  contest  with  the 
church  for  the  control  of  society  and  for  the  guardianship 
of  peace,  because  the  church  had  failed  to  secure  peace. 

The  United  States  presents  us  a  case  quite  by  itself. 
We  have  here  a  confederated  state  which  is  a  grand 
peace-group.  It  occupies  the  heart  of  a  continent; 
therefore  there  can  be  no  question  of  balance  of  power 
here  and  no  need  of  war  preparations  such  as  now  im- 
poverish Europe.  The  United  States  is  a  new  country 
with  a  sparse  population  and  no  strong  neighbors.  Such  a 
state  w^ill  be  a  democracy  and  a  republic,  and  it  will  be 
"free"  in  almost  any  sense  that  its  people  choose.  If 
this  state  becomes  militant,  it  will  be  because  its  people 
choose  to  become  such;  it  will  be  because  they  think 
that  war  and  warlikeness  are  desirable  in  themselves  and 
are  worth  going  after.  On  their  own  continent  they  need 
never  encounter  war  on  their  path  of  industrial  and 
political  development  up  to  any  standard  which  they 
choose  to  adopt.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  fact,  and  one 
which  has  had  immense  influence  on  the  history  of  civili- 
zation, that  the  land  of  the  globe  is  divided  into  two 
great  sections,  the  mass  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa  on 
the  one  side  and  these  two  Americas  on  the  other,  and  that 
one  of  these  worlds  remained  unknown  to  the  other  until 
only  four  hundred  years  ago.  We  talk  a  great  deal  about 
progress  and  modern  enlightenment  and  democracy  and 


WAR  27 

the  happiness  of  the  masses,  but  very  few  people  seem 
to  know  to  what  a  great  extent  all  those  things  are  con- 
sequences of  the  discovery  of  the  new  world.  As  to  this 
matter  of  war  which  we  are  now  considering,  the  fact 
that  the  new  world  is  removed  to  such  a  distance  from 
the  old  world  made  it  possible  for  men  to  make  a  new 
start  here.  It  was  possible  to  break  old  traditions,  to 
revise  institutions,  and  to  think  out  a  new  philosophy  to 
fit  an  infant  society,  at  the  same  time  that  whatever 
there  was  in  the  inheritance  from  the  old  world  which 
seemed  good  and  available  might  be  kept.  It  was  a 
marvelous  opportunity;  to  the  student  of  history  and 
human  institutions  it  seems  incredible  that  it  ever  could 
have  been  offered.  The  men  who  founded  this  repub- 
lic recognized  that  opportunity  and  tried  to  use  it.  It 
is  we  who  are  now  here  who  have  thrown  it  away;  we 
have  decided  that  instead  of  working  out  the  advan- 
tages of  it  by  peace,  simplicity,  domestic  happiness, 
industry  and  thrift,  we  would  rather  do  it  in  the  old  way 
by  war  and  glory,  alternate  victory  and  calamity,  adven- 
turous enterprises,  grand  finance,  powerful  government, 
and  great  social  contrasts  of  splendor  and  misery.  Future 
ages  will  look  back  to  us  with  amazement  and  reproach 
that  we  should  have  made  such  a  choice  in  the  face  of 
such  an  opportunity  and  should  have  entailed  on  them 
the  consequences  —  for  the  opportunity  will  never  come 
again. 

Some  illustration  of  our  subject  has,  however,  been 
furnished  by  the  internal  history  of  our  peace-group. 
The  aborigines  of  this  continent  have  never  been  taken 
into  our  peace-bond,  and  our  law  about  them  is,  con- 
sequently, full  of  inconsistencies.  Sometimes  they  have 
been  treated  as  comrades  in  the  in-group;  sometimes  as 
an  out-group  with  which  our  group  was  on  a  footing  of 


28       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

hostility.  Another  question  seems  to  be  arising  with 
respect  to  the  negroes;  we  have  been  trying,  since  the 
Civil  War,  to  absorb  them  into  our  peace-bond,  but  we 
have  not  succeeded.  They  are  in  it  and  not  of  it  now,  as 
much  as,  or  more  than,  in  the  days  of  slavery,  for  the  two 
races  live  more  independently  of  each  other  now  than  they 
did  in  those  former  days.  The  Southern  States  do  not 
constitute  true  societies  because  they  lack  unity  of  interest 
and  sentiment,  on  account  of  the  race  difference  which 
divides  them.  This  discord  may  prove  worse  and  more 
fatal  to  the  internal  integrity  of  the  peace-group  than  such 
old  antagonisms  of  interest  as  disturb  Ireland,  the 
national  antagonisms  which  agitate  Austria-Hungary,  or 
the  religious  antagonisms  which  distract  Belgium.  In 
short,  a  state  needs  to  be  a  true  peace-group  in  which 
there  is  sufficient  concord  and  sympathy  to  overcome  the 
antagonisms  of  nationality,  race,  class,  etc.,  and  in  which 
are  maintained  institutions  adequate  to  adjust  interests 
and  control  passions.  Before  even  the  great  civilized  states 
have  reached  this  model,  there  is  yet  much  to  be  done. 

If  we  look  at  these  facts  about  peace-laws  and  institu- 
tions and  the  formation  of  peace-groups  in  connection 
with  the  facts  previously  presented  about  the  causes  of 
war  and  the  taste  for  war,  we  see  that  militancy  and 
peacefulness  have  existed  side  by  side  in  human  society 
from  the  beginning  just  as  they  exist  now.  A  peaceful 
society  must  be  industrial  because  it  must  produce  instead 
of  plundering;  it  is  for  this  reason  that  the  industrial  type 
of  society  is  the  opposite  of  the  militant  type.  In  any 
state  on  the  continent  of  Europe  to-day  these  two  types 
of  societal  organization  may  be  seen  interwoven  with  each 
other  and  fighting  each  other.  Industrialism  builds  up; 
militancy  wastes.  If  a  railroad  is  built,  trade  and  inter- 
course indicate  a  line  on  which  it  ought  to  run;   military 


WAR  29 

strategy,  however,  overrules  this  and  requires  that  it 
run  otherwise.  Then  all  the  interests  of  trade  and  inter- 
course must  be  subjected  to  constant  delay  and  expense 
because  the  line  does  not  conform  to  them.  Not  a  dis- 
covery or  invention  is  made  but  the  war  and  navy  bureaus 
of  all  the  great  nations  seize  it  to  see  what  use  can  be 
made  of  it  in  war.  It  is  evident  that  men  love  war; 
when  two  hundred  thousand  men  in  the  United  States 
volunteer  in  a  month  for  a  war  with  Spain  which  appeals 
to  no  sense  of  wrong  against  their  country,  and  to  no 
other  strong  sentiment  of  human  nature,  when  their 
lives  are  by  no  means  monotonous  or  destitute  of  interest, 
and  where  life  offers  chances  of  wealth  and  prosperity, 
the  pure  love  of  adventure  and  war  must  be  strong  in  our 
population.  Europeans  who  have  to  do  military  service 
have  no  such  enthusiasm  for  war  as  war.  The  presence 
of  such  a  sentiment  in  the  midst  of  the  most  purely  indus- 
trial state  in  the  world  is  a  wonderful  phenomenon.  At 
the  same  time  the  social  philosophy  of  the  modern  civil- 
ized world  is  saturated  with  humanitarianism  and  flabby 
sentimentalism.  The  humanitarianism  is  in  the  litera- 
ture; by  it  the  reading  public  is  led  to  suppose  that 
the  world  is  advancing  along  some  line  which  they  call 
"progress"  towards  peace  and  brotherly  love.  Nothing 
could  be  more  mistaken.  We  read  of  fist-law  and  con- 
stant war  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  think  that  life  must 
have  been  full  of  conflicts  and  bloodshed  then;  but 
modern  warfare  bears  down  on  the  whole  population  with 
a  frightful  weight  through  all  the  years  of  peace.  Never, 
from  the  day  of  barbarism  down  to  our  own  time,  has 
every  man  in  a  society  been  a  soldier  until  now;  and  the 
armaments  of  to-day  are  immensely  more  costly  than  ever 
before.  There  is  only  one  limit  possible  to  the  war 
preparations  of  a  modern  European  state;    that  is,  the 


30       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

last  man  and  the  last  dollar  it  can  control.  What  will 
come  of  the  mixture  of  sentimental  social  philosophy  and 
warlike  policy?  There  is  only  one  thing  rationally  to  be 
expected,  and  that  is  a  frightful  effusion  of  blood  in 
revolution  and  war  during  the  century  now  opening. 
--  It  is  said  that  there  are  important  offsets  to  all  the 
burden  and  harm  of  this  exaggerated  militancy.  That 
is  true.  Institutions  and  customs  in  human  society  are 
never  either  all  good  or  all  bad.  W'e  cannot  adopt  either 
peacefulness  or  warlikeness  as  a  sole  true  philosophy. 
Military  discipline  educates;  military  interest  awakens 
all  the  powers  of  men,  so  that  they  are  eager  to  win  and 
their  ingenuity  is  quickened  to  invent  new  and  better 
weapons.  In  history  the  military  inventions  have  led 
the  way  and  have  been  afterwards  applied  to  industry. 
Chemical  inventions  were  made  in  the  attempt  to  produce 
combinations  which  would  be  destructive  in  war;  we 
owe  some  of  our  most  useful  substances  to  discoveries 
which  were  made  in  this  effort.  The  skill  of  artisans 
has  been  developed  in  making  weapons,  and  then  that 
skill  has  been  available  for  industry.  The  only  big 
machines  which  the  ancients  ever  made  were  batter- 
ing-rams, catapults,  and  other  engines  of  war.  The 
construction  of  these  things  familiarized  men  with 
mechanical  devices  which  were  capable  of  universal 
application.  Gunpowder  was  discovered  in  the  attempt 
to  rediscover  Greek  fire;  it  was  a  grand  invention  in 
military  art  but  we  should  never  have  had  our  canals, 
railroads,  and  other  great  works  without  such  explosives. 
Again,  we  are  indebted  to  the  chemical  experiments  in 
search  of  military  agents  for  our  friction  matches. 

War  also  develops  societal  organization;  it  produces 
political  institutions  and  classes.  In  the  past  these  insti- 
tutions and  classes  have  been  attended  by  oppression 


WAR  31 

and  by  the  exploitation  of  man  by  man;  nevertheless, 
the  more  highly  organized  society  has  produced  gains  for 
all  its  members,  including  the  oppressed  or  their  posterity. 
The  social  exploitation  is  not  essential  to  the  organiza- 
tion, and  it  may  be  prevented  by  better  provisions.  In 
-y.long  periods  of  peace  the  whole  societal  structure  becomes 
jfixed  in  its  adjustments  and  the  functions  all  run  into 
routine.  Vested  interests  get  an  established  control; 
some  classes  secure  privileges  and  establish  precedents, 
while  other  classes  form  habits  of  acquiescence.  Tradi- 
tions acquire  a  sacred  character  and  philosophical  doc- 
trines are  taught  in  churches  and  schools  which  make 
existing  customs  seem  to  be  the  "eternal  order  of  nature." 
It  becomes  impossible  to  find  a  standing-ground  from 
which  to  attack  abuses  and  organize  reform.  Such  was 
the  case  in  France  in  the  eighteenth  century.  By  war 
new  social  powers  break  their  way  and  create  a  new  order. 
The  student  is  tempted  to  think  that  even  a  great  social 
convulsion  is  worth  all  it  costs.  What  other  force  could 
break  the  bonds  and  open  the  way?  But  that  is  not  the 
correct  inference,  because  war  and  revolution  never  pro- 
duce what  is  wanted,  but  only  some  mixture  of  the  old 
evils  with  new  ones;  what  is  wanted  is  a  peaceful  and 
rational  solution  of  problems  and  situations — but  that 
requires  great  statesmanship  and  great  popular  sense 
and  virtue.  In  the  past  the  work  has  been  done  by  war 
and  revolution,  with  haphazard  results  and  great  attend- 
ant evils.  To  take  an  example  from  our  own  history: 
the  banking  and  currency  system  of  the  United  States, 
in  1860,  was  at  a  deadlock;  we  owe  the  national  bank 
system,  which  was  a  grand  reform  of  currency  and  bank- 
ing, to  the  Civil  War.  It  is  impossible  to  see  how  else  we 
could  have  overcome  the  vested  interests  and  could  have 
extricated  ourselves  from  our  position.     It  was  no  pur- 


32       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIA:M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

pose  of  the  war  to  reform  the  currency,  but  it  gave  an 
incidental  opportunity  and  we  had  to  win  from  it  what 
we  could. 

There  is  another  effect  of  war  which  is  less  obvious  but 
more  important.  During  a  period  of  peace,  rest,  and 
routine,  powers  are  developed  which  are  in  reality  socie- 
tal variations,  among  which  a  certain  societal  selection 
should  take  place.  Here  comes  in  the  immense  benefit 
of  real  liberty,  because,  if  there  is  real  liberty,  a  natural 
selection  results;  but  if  there  is  social  prejudice,  monop- 
oly, privilege,  orthodoxy,  tradition,  popular  delusion,  or 
any  other  restraint  on  liberty,  selection  does  not  occur. 
War  operates  a  rude  and  imperfect  selection.  Our  Civil 
War  may  serve  as  an  example;  think  of  the  public  men 
who  were  set  aside  by  it  and  of  the  others  who  were 
brought  forward  by  it,  and  compare  them  in  character 
and  ideas.  Think  of  the  doctrines  which  were  set 
aside  as  false,  and  of  the  others  which  were  established 
as  true;  also  of  the  constitutional  principles  which  were 
permanently  stamped  as  heretical  or  orthodox.  As  a 
simple  example,  compare  the  position  and  authority  of 
the  president  of  the  United  States  as  it  was  before  and 
as  it  has  been  since  the  Civil  War.  The  Germans  tell 
of  the  ruthless  and  cruel  acts  of  Napoleon  in  Germany, 
and  all  that  they  say  is  true;  but.  he  did  greater  services 
to  Germany  than  any  other  man  who  can  be  mentioned. 
He  tore  down  the  relics  of  mediaevalism  and  set  the 
powers  of  the  nation  to  some  extent  free  from  the  fetters 
of  tradition;  we  do  not  see  what  else  could  have  done  it. 
It  took  another  war  in  1870  to  root  out  the  traditional 
institutions  and  make  way  for  the  new  ones.  Of  course 
the  whole  national  life  responded  to  this  selection.  The 
Roman  state  was  a  selfish  and  pitiless  subjugation  of  all 
the  rest  of  mankind.     It  was  built  on  slavery,  it  cost 


WAR  33 

inconceivable  blood  and  tears,  and  it  was  a  grand  system 
of  extortion  and  plunder,  but  it  gave  security  and  peace 
under  which  the  productive  powers  of  the  provinces 
expanded  and  grew.  The  Roman  state  gave  discipline 
and  organization  and  it  devised  institutions;  the  modern 
world  has  inherited  societal  elements  from  it  which  are 
invaluable.  One  of  the  silliest  enthusiasms  which  ever 
got  control  of  the  minds  of  a  great  body  of  men  was  the 
Crusades,  but  the  Crusades  initiated  a  breaking  up  of 
the  stagnation  of  the  Dark  Ages  and  an  emancipation 
of  the  social  forces  of  Europe.  They  exerted  a  selective 
effect  to  destroy  what  was  barbaric  and  deadening  and  to 
foster  what  had  new  hope  in  it  by  furnishing  a  stimulus 
to  thought  and  knowledge. 

A  society  needs  to  have  a  ferment  in  it;  sometimes  an 
enthusiastic  delusion  or  an  adventurous  folly  answers  the 
purpose.  In  the  modern  world  the  ferment  is  furnished 
by  econoniTc  opportunity  and  hope  of  luxury.  In  other 
ages  it  has  often  been  furnished  by  war.  Therefore  some 
social  philosophers  have  maintained  that  the  best  course 
of  human  affairs  is  an  alternation  of  peace  and  war.^ 
Some  of  them  also  argue  that  the  only  unity  of  the  human 
race  which  can  ever  come  about  must  be  realized  from  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  in  a  war  of  weapons,  in  a  conflict 
of  usages,  and  in  a  rivalry  issuing  in  adaptability  to  the 
industrial  organization.  It  is  not  probable  that  aborigi- 
nes will  ever  in  the  future  be  massacred  in  masses,  as 
they  have  been  in  the  past,  but  the  case  is  even  worse 
when,  like  our  Indians  for  instance,  they  are  set  before 
a  fatal  dilemma.  They  cannot  any  longer  live  in  their 
old  way;  they  must  learn  to  live  by  unskilled  labor  or 
by  the  mechanic  arts.  This,  then,  is  the  dilemma:  to 
enter  into  the  civilized  industrial  organization  or  to  die 

^  Gumplowicz,  L.:  Grimdriss  der  Sociologie,  125. 


34       ESSAYS  OF  \^TLLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMXER 

out.  If  it  had  been  possible  for  men  to  sit  still  in  peace 
without  civilization,  they  never  would  have  achieved 
civilization;  it  is  the  iron  spur  of  the  nature-process  which 
has  forced  them  on,  and  one  form  of  the  nature-process 
has  been  the  attack  of  some  men  upon  others  who  were 
weaker  than  they. 

We  find,  then,  that  in  the  past  as  a  matter  of  fact  war 
has  played  a  great  part  in  the  irrational  nature-process 
by  which  things  have  come  to  pass.  But  the  nature- 
processes  are  frightful;  they  contain  no  allowance  for 
the  feelings  and  interests  of  individuals  —  for  it  is  only 
individuals  who  have  feelings  and  interests.  The  nature- 
elements  never  suffer  and  they  never  pity.  If  we  are 
terrified  at  the  nature-processes  there  is  only  one  way  to 
escape  them;  it  is  the  way  by  which  men  have  always 
evaded  them  to  some  extent;  it  is  by  knowledge,  by_ 
rational  methods,  and  by  the  arts.  The  facts  which 
have  been  presented  about  the  functions  of  war  in  the 
past  are  not  flattering  to  the  human  reason  or  conscience. 
They  seem  to  show  that  we  are  as  much  indebted  for 
our  welfare  to  base  passion  as  to  noble  and  intelligent 
endeavor.  At  the  present  moment  things  do  not  look 
much  better.  We  talk  of  civilizing  lower  races,  but  we 
never  have  done  it  yet;  we  have  exterminated  them. 
Our  devices  for  civilizing  them  have  been  as  disastrous  to 
them  as  our  firearms.  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  the  great  civilized  nations  are  making  haste,  in 
the  utmost  jealousy  of  each  other,  to  seize  upon  all  the 
outlying  parts  of  the  globe;  they  are  vying  with  each 
other  in  the  construction  of  navies  by  which  each  may 
defend  its  share  against  the  others.  ^Miat  will  happen? 
As  they  are  preparing  for  war  they  certainly  will  have 
war,  and  their  methods  of  colonization  and  exploitation 
will  destroy  the  aborigines.     In  this  way  the  human  race 


WAR  35 

will  be  civilized  —  but  by  the  extermination  of  the 
uncivilized  —  unless  the  men  of  the  twentieth  century 
can  devise  plans  for  dealing  with  aborigines  which  are 
better  than  any  which  have  yet  been  devised.  No  one 
has  yet  found  any  way  in  which  two  races,  far  apart  in 
blood  and  culture,  can  be  amalgamated  into  one  society 
with  satisfaction  to  both.  Plainly,  in  this  matter  which 
lies  in  the  immediate  future,  the  only  alternatives  to 
force  and  bloodshed  are  more  knowledge  and  more  reason. 

Shall  any  statesman,  therefore,  ever  dare  to  say  that 
it  would  be  well,  at  a  given  moment,  to  have  a  war,  lest 
the  nation  fall  into  the  vices  of  industrialism  and  the 
evils  of  peace?  The  answer  is  plainly :  No !  War  is  never 
a  handy  remedy,  which  can  be  taken  up  and  applied  by 
routine  rule.  No  war  which  can  be  avoided  is  just  to  the 
people  who  have  to  carry  it  on,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
enemy.  War  is  like  other  evils ;  it  must  be  met  when  it  is 
unavoidable,  and  such  gain  as  can  be  got  from  it  must 
be  won.  In  the  forum  of  reason  and  deliberation  war 
never  can  be  anything  but  a  makeshift,  to  be  regretted; 
it  is  the  task  of  the  statesman  to  find  rational  means  to 
the  same  end.  A  statesman  who  proposes  war  as  an 
instrumentality  admits  his  incompetency;  a  politician 
who  makes  use  of  war  as  a  counter  in  the  game  of  parties 
is  a  criminal. 

Can  peace  be  universal.'^  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
it.  It  is  a  fallacy  to  suppose  that  by  widening  the  peace- 
group  more  and  more  it  can  at  last  embrace  all  mankind. 
WTiat  happens  is  that,  as  it  grows  bigger,  differences,  dis- 
cords, antagonisms,  and  war  begin  inside  of  it  on  account 
of  the  divergence  of  interests.  Since  evil  passions  are  a 
part  of  human  nature  and  are  in  all  societies  all  the  time, 
a  part  of  the  energy  of  the  society  is  constantly  spent  in 
repressing  them.     If  all  nations  should  resolve  to  have 


36       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

no  armed  ships  any  more,  pirates  would  reappear  upon 
the  ocean;  the  police  of  the  seas  must  be  maintained. 
We  could  not  dispense  with  our  militia;  we  have  too  fre- 
quent need  of  it  now.  But  police  defense  is  not  war 
in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  been  discussing  it.  War,  in 
the  future  will  be  the  clash  of  policies  of  national  vanity 
and  selfishness  when  they  cross  each  other's  path. 

If  you  want  war,  nourish  a  doctrine.  Doctrines  are 
the  most  frightful  tyrants  to  which  men  ever  are  subject, 
because  doctrines  get  inside  of  a  man's  own  reason  and 
betray  him  against  himself.  Civilized  men  have  done 
their  fiercest  fighting  for  doctrines.  The  reconquest  of 
the  Holy  Sepulcher,  "the  balance  of  power,"  "no  univer- 
sal dominion,"  "trade  follows  the  flag,"  "he  who  holds 
the  land  will  hold  the  sea,"  "the  throne  and  the  altar," 
the  revolution,  the  faith  —  these  are  the  things  for  which 
men  have  given  their  lives.  Wliat  are  they  all?  Noth- 
ing but  rhetoric  and  phantasms.  Doctrines  are  always 
vague;  it  would  ruin  a  doctrine  to  define  it,  because  then 
it  could  be  analyzed,  tested,  criticised,  and  verified;  but 
nothing  ought  to  be  tolerated  which  cannot  be  so  tested. 
Somebody  asks  you  with  astonishment  and  horror  whether 
you  do  not  believe  in  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  You  do  not 
know  whether  you  do  or  not,  because  you  do  not  know 
what  it  is;  but  you  do  not  dare  to  say  that  you  do  not, 
because  you  understand  that  it  is  one  of  the  things  which 
every  good  American  is  bound  to  believe  in.  Now  when 
any  doctrine  arrives  at  that  degree  of  authority,  the  name 
of  it  is  a  club  which  any  demagogue  may  swing  over 
you  at  any  time  and  apropos  of  anything.  In  order  to 
describe  a  doctrine  we  must  have  recourse  to  theological 
language.  A  doctrine  is  an  article  of  faith.  It  is  some- 
thing which  you  are  bound  to  believe,  not  because  you 
have  some  rational  grounds  for  believing  it  true,  but 


WAR  37 

because  you  belong  to  such  and  such  a  church  or  denomi- 
nation. The  nearest  parallel  to  it  in  politics  is  the  "reason 
of  state."  The  most  frightful  injustice  and  cruelty  which 
has  ever  been  perpetrated  on  earth  has  been  due  to  the 
reason  of  state.  Jesus  Christ  was  put  to  death  for  the 
reason  of  state;  Pilate  said  that  he  found  no  fault  in 
the  accused,  but  he  wanted  to  keep  the  Jews  quiet  and 
one  man  crucified  more  or  less  was  of  no  consequence. 
None  of  these  metaphysics  ought  to  be  tolerated  in  a  free 
state.  A  policy  in  a  state  we  can  understand;  for  in- 
stance it  was  the  policy  of  the  United  States  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  to  get  the  free  navigation  of  the 
Mississippi  to  its  mouth,  even  at  the  expense  of  war  with 
Spain.  That  policy  had  reason  and  justice  in  it;  it  was 
founded  in  our  interests;  it  had  positive  form  and  definite 
scope.  A  doctrine  is  an  abstract  principle;  it  is  neces- 
sarily absolute  in  its  scope  and  abstruse  in  its  terms;  it 
is  a  metaphysical  assertion.  It  is  never  true,  because 
it  is  absolute,  and  the  affairs  of  men  are  all  conditioned 
and  relative.  The  physicists  tell  us  now  that  there  are 
phenomena  which  appear  to  present  exceptions  to  gravi- 
tation which  can  be  explained  only  by  conceiving  that 
gravitation  requires  time  to  get  to  work.  We  are  con- 
vinced that  perpetual  motion  is  absolutely  impossible 
within  the  world  of  our  experiences,  but  it  now  appears 
that  our  universe  taken  as  a  whole  is  a  case  of  perpetual 
motion. 

Now,  to  turn  back  to  politics,  just  think  what  an 
abomination  in  statecraft  an  abstract  doctrine  must  be. 
Any  politician  or  editor  can,  at  any  moment,  put  a  new 
extension  on  it.  The  people  acquiesce  in  the  doctrine 
and  applaud  it  because  they  hear  the  politicians  and  edi- 
tors repeat  it,  and  the  politicians  and  editors  repeat  it 
because  they  think  it  is  popular.     So  it  grows.     During 


38       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  recent  difficulty  between  England  and  Germany  on 
one  side  and  Venezuela  on  the  other,  some  newspapers 
here  began  to  promulgate  a  new  doctrine  that  no  coun- 
try ought  to  be  allowed  to  use  its  naval  force  to  col- 
lect private  debts.  This  doctrine  would  have  given  us 
standing-ground  for  interference  in  that  quarrel.  That 
is  what  it  was  invented  for.  Of  course  it  was  absurd  and 
ridiculous,  and  it  fell  dead  unnoticed,  but  it  well  showed 
the  danger  of  having  a  doctrine  lying  loose  about  the 
house,  and  one  which  carries  with  it  big  consequences 
It  may  mean  anything  or  nothing,  at  any  moment,  and 
no  one  knows  how  it  will  be.  You  accede  to  it  now, 
w^ithin  the  vague  limits  of  what  you  suppose  it  to  be; 
therefore  you  w^ill  have  to  accede  to  it  to-morrow  when 
the  same  name  is  made  to  cover  something  which  you 
never  have  heard  or  thought  of.  If  you  allow  a  political 
catchword  to  go  on  and  grow,  you  will  awaken  some  day 
to  find  it  standing  over  you,  the  arbiter  of  your  destiny, 
against  which  you  are  powerless,  as  men  are  powerless 
against  delusions. 

The  process  by  which  such  catchwords  grow  is  the 
old  popular  mythologizing.  Y^our  Monroe  Doctrine 
becomes  an  entity,  a  being,  a  lesser  kind  of  divinity, 
entitled  to  reverence  and  possessed  of  prestige,  so  that 
it  allows  of  no  discussion  or  deliberation.  The  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  talks  about  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine and  he  tells  us  solemnly  that  it  is  true  and  sacred, 
whatever  it  is.  He  even  undertakes  to  give  some  defi- 
nition of  what  he  means  by  it;  but  the  definition  which 
he  gives  binds  nobody,  either  now  or  in  the  future,  any 
more  than  what  Monroe  and  Adams  meant  by  it  binds 
anybody  now  not  to  mean  anything  else.  He  says  that, 
on  account  of  the  doctrine,  whatever  it  may  be,  we  must 
have  a  big  navy.     In  this,  at   least,    he   is   plainly   in 


WAR  39 

the  right;  if  we  have  the  doctrine,  we  shall  need  a  big 
navy.  The  Monroe  Doctrine  is  an  exercise  of  authority 
by  the  United  States  over  a  controversy  between  two 
foreign  states,  if  one  of  them  is  in  America,  combined 
with  a  refusal  of  the  United  States  to  accept  any  respon- 
sibility in  connection  with  the  controversy.  That  is  a 
position  which  is  sure  to  bring  us  into  collision  with  other 
States,  especially  because  it  will  touch  their  vanity,  or 
what  they  call  their  honor  —  or  it  will  touch  our  vanity, 
or  what  we  call  our  honor,  if  we  should  ever  find  ourselves 
called  upon  to  "back  down"  from  it.  Therefore  it  is 
very  true  that  we  must  expect  to  need  a  big  navy  if  we 
adhere  to  the  doctrine.  What  can  be  more  contrary  to 
sound  statesmanship  and  common  sense  than  to  put 
forth  an  abstract  assertion  which  has  no  definite  relation 
to  any  interest  of  ours  now  at  stake,  but  which  has  in  it 
any  number  of  possibilities  of  producing  complications 
which  we  cannot  foresee,  but  which  are  sure  to  be  em- 
barrassing when  they  arise! 

WTiat  has  just  been  said  suggests  a  consideration  of 
the  popular  saying,  "In  time  of  peace  prepare  for  war." 
If  you  prepare  a  big  army  and  navy  and  are  all  ready  for 
war,  it  will  be  easy  to  go  to  war;  the  military  and  naval 
men  will  have  a  lot  of  new  machines  and  they  will  be 
eager  to  see  what  they  can  do  with  them.  There  is  no 
such  thing  nowadays  as  a  state  of  readiness  for  war. 
It  is  a  chimera,  and  the  nations  which  pursue  it  are  falling 
into  an  abyss  of  wasted  energy  and  wealth.  WHien  the 
army  is  supplied  with  the  latest  and  best  rifles,  someone 
invents  a  new  field  gun;  then  the  artillery  must  be  pro- 
vided with  that  before  we  are  ready.  By  the  time  we 
get  the  new  gun,  somebody  has  invented  a  new  rifle  and 
our  rival  nation  is  getting  that;  therefore  we  must  have 
it,  or  one  a  little  better.     It  takes  two  or  three  years  and 


40      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

several  millions  to  do  that.  In  the  meantime  somebody 
proposes  a  more  effective  organization  which  must  be 
introduced;  signals,  balloons,  dogs,  bicycles,  and  every 
other  device  and  invention  must  be  added,  and  men 
must  be  trained  to  use  them  all.  There  is  no  state  of 
readiness  for  war;  the  notion  calls  for  never-ending 
sacrifices.  It  is  a  fallacy.  It  is  evident  that  to  pursue 
such  a  notion  with  any  idea  of  realizing  it  would  absorb 
all  the  resources  and  activity  of  the  state;  this  the  great 
European  states  are  now  proving  by  experiment.  A 
wiser  rule  would  be  to  make  up  your  mind  soberly  what 
you  want,  peace  or  war,  and  then  to  get  ready  for 
what  you  want;  for  what  we  prepare  for  is  what  we 
shall  get. 


THE  FAMILY  AND   SOCIAL  CHANGE 


II 

THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE 

[  1909  ] 

WE  currently  speak  of  the  "institution"  of  mar- 
riage. We  also  use  marriage  instead  of  wedding, 
nuptials,  or  matrimony.  The  result  is  confusion.  A  wed- 
ding or  even  nuptials  occur  as  a  ceremony  or  festival,  on 
a  day,  and  as  the  commencement  of  wedlock  or  matri- 
mony. Wedlock  may  be  an  institution,  but  a  wedding 
is  not,  for  a  wedding  lacks  the  duration  or  recurrence 
which  belongs  to  an  institution.  It  does  not  provide  for  an 
enduring  necessity  and  has  no  apparatus  for  the  repeated 
use  of  the  same  couple.  Wedlock  is  a  permanent  rela- 
tion between  a  man  and  a  woman  which  is  regulated  and 
defined  by  the  mores.  It  brings  the  pair  into  coopera- 
tion for  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  procreation 
and  nurture  of  children.  Wedlock  therefore  forms  a 
family,  and  a  family  seems  to  satisfy  our  idea  of  an  insti- 
tution far  better  than  marriage  or  matrimony.  The 
family  institution  existed  probably  before  marriage;  a 
woman  with  an  infant  in  her  arms  is  what  we  see  as  far 
back  as  our  investigations  lead  us.  She  was  limited  and 
burdened  in  the  struggle  for  existence  by  her  infant. 
The  task  of  finding  subsistence  was  as  hard  for  her  as 
for  a  man,  and,  in  addition  to  this  the  infant  was  a 
claimant  to  her  time  and  labor.  Her  chance  of  survival 
lay  in  union  and  cooperation  with  a  man.  Undoubtedly 
this  gives  us  the  real  explanation  of  the  primitive  inferior- 
ity of  women;  they  needed  the  help  of  men  more  than 

[43] 


44      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

men  needed  theirs,  and  if  a  union  was  made  it  was 
made  on  terms  mider  w^liich  the  woman  got  the  disad- 
vantage. 

It  certainly  is  a  great  mistake  to  believe  that  the  women 
were  put  down  because  the  men  were  always  physically 
stronger.  In  the  first  place  the  men  are  not  always 
stronger;  perhaps  it  is,  as  a  rule,  the  other  way.  Mr. 
H.  H.  Johnston  says  of  the  Andombies  on  the  Congo 
that  the  women,  though  working  very  hard  as  laborers 
in  general,  lead  a  happy  existence;  they  are  often 
stronger  than  the  men  and  more  finely  developed,  some 
of  them  having  splendid  figures.  Parke,  speaking  of 
the  Manyuema  of  the  Arruwimi  in  the  same  region, 
says  that  they  are  fine  animals,  and  the  women  very  hand- 
some. They  are  as  strong  as  the  men.  In  North  Amer- 
ica an  Indian  chief  once  said  to  Hearne,  "Women  were 
made  for  labor;  one  of  them  can  carry,  or  haul,  as  much 
as  two  men  can  do."  Schellong  says  of  the  Papuans  in 
the  German  protectorate  of  New  Guinea  that  the  women 
are  more  strongly  built  than  the  men.^  According  to 
Kubary,2  a  man  has  the  right  to  beat  his  wife,  but  the 
women  are  so  robust  that  a  man  who  tries  to  do  it  may 
well  find  that  he  will  get  the  worse  of  it.  Fights  between 
men  and  women  are  not  rare  in  savage  life,  and  the  women 
prevail  in  a  fair  share  of  them;  Holm  mentions  a  case 
where  a  Greenland  Eskimo  tried  to  flog  his  wife,  but  she 
flogged  him.^  W^e  hear  of  a  custom  in  south-eastern 
Australia  that  fights  between  the  sexes  were  provoked 
when  "there  were  young  women  who  were  marriageable 
but  were  not  mated,  and  when  the  eligible  bachelors  were 
backward.     The  men  would  kill  a  totem  animal  of  the 

^  Ellis,  H.:  Man  and  Woman,    4. 

*  Beitrag  zur  Kenntnis  der  Xukuoro-  oder  Monteverde-Inseln,  35. 

'  Ethnologisk  Skizze  af  Angmagsalikeme,  55. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  45 

women  or  the  women  would  kill  a  totem  animal  of  the 
men.  This  led  to  a  fight  of  the  young  men  and  young 
women;  then,  after  the  wounds  healed  they  would 
pair  off  and  the  social  deadlock  would  pass  away."  ^ 
Another  case,  from  higher  civilization,  shows  how  the 
woman  was  weakened  by  considerations  of  another 
kind.  Sieroshevski,  a  Pole,  who  lived  for  twelve  years 
among  the  Yakuts,  says  that  he  knew  a  Yakut  woman 
who  was  constantly  abused  by  her  husband,  although 
she  was  industrious  and  good-natured.  At  last  the 
European  asked  her  why  she  did  not  fight.  He  assured 
her  that  she  would  succeed  and  he  argued  with  her  that 
if  she  would  once  give  her  husband  a  good  beating  he 
would  not  misuse  her  any  more.  She,  however,  answered 
that  that  would  never  do,  that  her  husband's  companions 
would  deride  him  as  the  man  whose  wife  beat  him,  and 
their  children  would  be  derided  by  the  other  children 
for  the  same  reason.  She  would  not  do  anything  which 
would  produce  that  consequence  and  would  make  her 
worse  off.  This  case  has  many  parallels.  A  character- 
istic incident  occurred  at  the  Black  Mountain  station  on 
the  Snowy  River  about  the  years  1855-56.  "A  num- 
ber of  Theddora  (Ya-itma-thang)  blacks  had  come  across 
from  Omeo  and  there  met  a  woman,  known  to  me  as 
Old  Jenny,  of  their  tribe,  who  had  broken  their  law  by 
becoming  the  wife  of  a  man  to  whom  she  stood  in  the 
tribal  relationship  of  Najan  (mother).  She  had  been 
away  for  some  years,  and  this  was  the  first  time  that  her 
kindred  had  encountered  her.  The  wife  of  one  of  them 
attacked  her  first  with  a  digging-stick,  but  she  defended 
herself  so  well  with  the  same  weapon  that  the  woman 
had  to  desist,  and  her  husband  continued  the  attack  on 
Old  Jenny,  who  had  divested  herself  of  all  but  one  small 

^Howitt,  A.  W.:  South  Eastern  Australia,  149. 


46       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

garment.  He  commenced  with  a  club,  but  finding  he 
could  not  hit  her,  changed  it  for  a  curved  club  with 
which  he  tried  to  'peck'  her  on  the  head  over  guard. 
After  a  time  he  also  had  to  give  it  up,  and  they  had  to 
make  friends  with  the  invincible  woman.  This  is  an 
instance  of  the  manner  in  which  the  women  are  able  to 
defend  themselves  with  their  weapon,  the  yam-stick,  being 
no  mean  opponents  of  a  man  armed  only  with  a  club."  ^ 

The  status  of  woman  was  generally  sad  and  pathetic 
in  savage  life,  but  we  may  accept  it  as  an  established 
fact  that  this  was  not  because  she  was  physically  inferior 
to  man,  but  was  due  rather  to  inferiority  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  on  account  of  maternity.  In  the  family 
the  man  often  tyrannized  over  the  woman,  and  the  woman 
came  into  the  family  unwillingly,  driven  by  a  greater 
necessity,  but  the  family  was  not  a  product  of  force.  It 
was  a  product  of  contract.  It  was  controlled  by  the 
mores  which  soon  established  notions  of  the  right  way 
to  behave  and  of  rights  and  duties  which  would  be  con- 
ducive to  prosperity  and  happiness. 

In  this  primitive  society  the  family  became  the  arena 
in  which  folkways  were  formed  and  taught,  traditions 
were  handed  down,  myths  were  invented,  and  sym- 
pathies were  cultivated.  The  mother  and  the  children 
were  in  the  closest  association  and  intimacy.  The 
instruction  of  example  without  spoken  command  or 
explanation  was  the  chief  instruction.  It  makes  little 
difference  whether  we  think  of  a  family  in  a  horde  or  of 
monandrous  family  of  Australians  or  Bushmen.  The  chil- 
dren learned  from  their  mothers  the  usages  wliich  were 
domestic  and  familiar,  which  underlie  society  and  are 
moral  in  their  character.  At  puberty  the  boys  went 
with  their  fathers  into  the  political  body  and  became 

^Howitt,  A.  W.:  I.e.,  197. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  47 

warriors  and  hunters.  Then  they  were  disciplined  into 
the  hfe  of  men  and  left  the  family.  They  got  wives  and 
founded  families,  but  the  father,  in  his  own  family,  was 
an  outsider  and  a  stranger  with  few  functions  and  little 
authority. 

Mohammed  gave  approval  tojh^.  father-family»  which 
seems  tQ-Jiave:-i)een  wmnmg_^a£ceptance  in  his  time. 
Q  Islam  is  founded  on_the  f ather-f amily»^  In  the  Koran 
woiTten  are  divided  into  three  classes  in  respect  to  mar- 
riage: first,  wives,  that  is,  status- wives  with  all  the  rank, 
honor,  and  rights  which  the  name  implies;  second,  con- 
cubines, that  is,  wives  of  an  inferior  class,  in  a  permanent 
and  recognized  relation,  but  without  the  rank  and  honor 
of  wives;  third,  slaves,  whose  greatest  chance  of  hap- 
piness was  to  "find  favor"  in  the  eyes  of  their  master 
or  owner.  This  classification  of  the  wives  was  also  a 
classification  of  the  mothers,  and  it  produced  jealousy 
and  strife  of  the  children.  Only  men  of  rank  and  wealth 
could  have  households  of  this  complex  character.  Those 
of  limited  means  had  to  choose  which  form  of  wife  they 
would  take.  The  full  status-wife  could  make  such  de- 
mands that  she  became  a  great  burden  to  her  husband, 
and  it  appears  that  the  Moslems  now  prefer  concubines 
or  slaves.  In  Mohammedan  royal  families  the  jealousies 
and  strifes  of  children,  where  the  son  of  a  slave  might 
be  preferred  and  made  heir  by  the  father,  have  reduced 
kingdoms  and  families  to  bloodshed  and  anarchy. 

In  general,  in  the  mother-family,  the  domestic  system 
must  have  lacked  integration  and  discipline.  The  Six 
Nations  or  Iroquois  had  the  mother-family  in  well-developed 
form.  Each  woman  with  her  husband  and  children  had  a 
room  about  seven  feet  square  in  the  "long  house."  This 
room  was  separated  from  others  inhabited  by  similar  fam- 
ilies, not  by  a  partition,  but  only  by  a  pole  three  or  four  feet 


48       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMXER 

from  the  floor,  over  which  skins  were  hung.  Each  family 
shared  fire  with  another  family  opposite,  and  evidently 
privacy  was  only  imperfectly  secured.  Any  man  who 
did  not  bring  in  what  was  considered  his  fair  share  of 
food-supply  could  be  expelled  at  any  time.  A  husband 
had  to  satisfy  not  only  his  wife,  but  all  her  female  rela- 
tives if  he  was  to  be  in  peace  and  comfort.  He  could 
withdraw  when  he  chose,  but  he  must  leave  his  children, 
for  they  belonged  to  his  wife.  He  must  also  keep  the 
peace  with  all  the  other  husbands  in  the  house,  although 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  frequent  occasions  of  quarrel  would 
occur.  In  short,  the  man  had  constant  and  important 
reasons  to  be  dissatisfied  with  the  mother-family.  He 
always  had  one  alternative:  he  could  capture  a  woman 
outside  the  group.  If  he  did  this  he  distinguished  him- 
self by  military  prowess  and  the  woman  was  a  trophy. 
He  was  not  limited  in  his  control  of  her  or  of  their  children 
by  any  customs  or  traditions,  and  he  could  arrange  his 
life  as  he  pleased.  V\'e  should  expect  that  great  numbers 
of  men  would  try  this  alternative,  but  it  does  not  appear 
that  many  did  so.  If  they  had  done  so  they  would  have 
speedily  introduced  man-descent  and  the  father-family. 
As  we  well  know,  uncivilized  men  do  not  freely  reflect 
on  their  experience  or  discuss  reforms  or  speculate  on 
progress;  they  accept  custom  and  tradition  and  make  the 
best  of  it  as  they  find  it.  The  change  to  the  man-family 
/  was  brought  about  by  some  great  alteration  in  the  condi- 
f  tions  of  the  struggle  for  existence  or  by  the  invention  of 
I  a  new  tool  or  weapon  used  by  the  men  or  by  war  with 
powerful  neighbors.  This  much,  however,  can  be  said 
ith  confidence  about  the  family  under  woman-descent: 
it  was  the  conservative  institution  of  that  form  of  society 
^  and  in  it  traditions  were  cherished  and  education  was 
accomplished.     It  did  not  encourage  change  or  cherish 


> 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  49 

reforms,   but   preserved   what   had   been   inherited   and 
protected  what  existed. 

Probably  the  change  from  mother-family  to  father- 
family  was  by  far  the  greatest  and  most  important  revo- 
lution in  the  history  of  civilization.  This  was  so  because 
the  family,  especially  in  primitive  society,  is  such  a  fun- 
damental institution  that  it  forces  all  other  societal 
details  into  conformity  with  itself.  Miss  Kingsley, 
speaking  of  the  negroes  of  WesLAfrica,  describes  societal 
details  as  follows:  **The  really  responsible  male  relative 
Lher^solder  brother.  From  him  must  leave  to 
marry  be  obtamedToFeither  girl  or  boy;  to  him  and  the 
mother  must  the  present  be  taken  which  is  exacted  on 
the  marriage  of  a  girl;  and  should  the  mother  die,  on 
him  and  not  on  the  father  lies  the  responsibility  of  rear- 
ing the  children.  They  go  to  his  house  and  he  treats 
and  regards  them  as  nearer  and  dearer  to  himself  than 
his  own  children,  and  at  his  death,  after  his  own  brothers 
by  the  same  mother,  they  become  his  heirs."  ^  These 
details  are  all  consistent  with  the  mother-family  and  are 
perfectly  logical  deductions  from  its  principles.  There 
never  was  any  such  thing  as  woman-rule,  if  by  that  it 
should  be  understood  that  women  administered  and  con- 
ducted in  detail  the  affairs  of  house  or  society,  directing 
the  men  what  they  should  do  or  not  do;  but  the  women 
•ei.th(^  Troquois  regulated  JJieJhgU5feJJfe;t  owned  the 
land,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  Indians  could  conceive 
of  land-owning,  because  they  tilled  it;  they  established 
the  reputation  of  warriors,  and  so  determined  who  should 
be  elected  war  chief  in  any  new  war,  and  they  decided 
the  treatment  of  captives.  Women,  however,  never 
made  a  state,  and  war,  so  long  as  the  woman-family 
existed,  was  always  limited  and  imperfect.     It  was  never 

^  Travels  in  West  Africa,  etc.,  224. 


50      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

decided  whether  a  man  must  fight  with  his  wife's  people 
or  go  back  to  the  clan  in  which  he  was  born  and  fight 
with  that.  War  was  oftenest  about  women  or  about 
blood  revenge.  It  was,  as  among  our  Indians,  a  raid 
and  not  a  persistent  campaign;  it  was  mean,  cowardly, 
savage,  and  marked  by  base  bloodshed. 

Much  of  this  seems  strange  and  inverted  to  us,  been  use 
our  society  has  long  been  characterized  by  the  father- 
family.  The  state  has  long  been  the  institution,  or  set 
of  institutions,  on  which  we  rely  for  our  most  important 
interests  and  our  notions  of  kin'ship,  of  rights,  of  moral 
right  or  wrong;  and  our  ways  of  property,  inheritance, 
trade,  and  intercourse  have  all  been  created  by  or  ad- 
justed to  the  system  of  man-descent.  We  can  see  what 
a  great  revolution  had  to  be  accomplished  to  go  over 
from  woman-descent  to  man-descent.  Christian  mis- 
sionaries often  find  themselves  entangled  in  this  tran- 
sition. In— WVgf  AfnVa  f]](^  Jlgji^^  jjg_kg,twg§^^xaother 
and_  children  is  farcloser  thari^at  between  father  and 
children^  and  _the_negro  women  do^not  likethe  cEaiige 
which  white  culture  wouI^TlTfing  about.  In  native  Taw 
husband  and  wife  have  separate  property,  so  that  if  white 
man's  law  was  introduced,  the  woman  would  lose  her 
property  and  would  not  get  her  husband's.  The  man  also 
objects  to  giving  his  wife  any  claim  on  his  property,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  does  not  want  the  children  saddled 
on  him.  It  seems  to  him  utter  absurdity  that  it  should 
be  his  duty  to  care  more  for  his  wife  than  for  his  mother 
and  sister.^  At  every  point,  in  going  over  to  the  father- 
family,  there  is  a  transfer  of  rights  and  power  and  a 
readjustment  of  social  theory. 

In  the  long  history  of  the  man-family  men  have  not 
been  able  to  decide  what  they  ought  to  think  about 

^  Kingsley,  M.  H.:  West  African  Studies,  377. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  51 

women.  It  has  been  maintained  that  woman  is  man's 
greatest  blessing  and  again  that  she  is  a  curse.  Also 
the  two  judgments  have  been  united  by  saying  that  she 
is  a  cheat  and  a  delusion,  that  is,  she  looks  like  a  blessing 
while  she  is  a  curse.  Each  of  those  exaggerated  views 
supports  the  other.  Every  blessing  may  appear  doubtful, 
under  circumstances;  every  curse  will  sometimes  appear 
to  be  a  blessing.  What  was  most  important  about  both 
these  views  was  that  man  was  regarded  as  independent 
and  complete  in  the  first  place  and  the  woman  was  brought 
to  him  as  a  helpmeet  or  assistant;  at  least  as  an  inferior 
whose  status  and  destiny  came  from  her  position  as  an 
adjunct.  That  was  the  position  of  woman  in  the  man- 
family.  We  have  abandoned  part  of  the  harshness  of 
this  construction  of  the  status  of  woman  and  all  the 
unkind  deductions  from  it;  the  moral  inferences,  how- 
ever, remain,  and  we  regard  them  as  self-evident  and 
eternal.  Loyalty  to  her  husband  is  the  highest  virtue 
of  a  woman,  and  devotion  to  her  family  and  sacrifice  for 
it  are  the  field  of  heroism  for  her.  We  speak  of  the 
Christian  family  as  the  highest  form  of  the  family,  and 
in  our  literature  and  our  current  code  the  Christian 
family  is  considered  as  furnishing  women  with  their 
grand  arena  for  self-culture  and  social  work.  I  cannot 
find  that  Christianity  has  done  anything  to  shape  the 
father-family;  of  the  Jewish  form  the  Old  Testament 
tells  us  hardly  anything.  In  Proverbs  we  find  some 
weighty  statements  of  general  truths,  universally  ac- 
cepted, and  some  ideal  descriptions  of  a  good  wife. 
The  words  of  Lemuel  in  chapter  31  are  the  only  didactic 
treatment  of  the  good  wife  in  the  Old  Testament;  she 
is  described  as  a  good  housekeeper,  a  good  cook,  and  a 
diligent  needlewoman.  Such  was  the  ideal  Jewish 
woman.     In  the  New  Testament  there  is  no  doctrine 


52       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

of  marriage,  no  description  of  the  proper  family,  and 
no  exposition  of  domestic  virtues.  Down  to  the  time 
of  Christ  it  appears  that  each  man  was  free  to  arrange 
his  family  as  he  saw  fit.  The  rich  and  great  had  more 
than  one  wife  or  they  had  concubines.  The  Talmud 
allowed  each  man  four  wives,  but  not  more.  In  fact,  at 
the  birth  of  Christ,  among  Jews,  Greeks,  and  Romans, 
all  except  the  rich  and  great  had  no  more  than  one  wife 
each,  on  account  of  the  trouble  and  expense  of  having 
more.  Yet  if  circumstances,  such  as  childlessness,  seemed 
to  make  it  expedient,  anyone  might  take  a  second  wife. 
Therefore  it  became  a  fact  of  the  mores,  of  all  but  the 
rich  and  great,  that  all  practiced  pair-marriage  and 
were  educated  in  it. 

Christianity  took  root  in  the  lowest  free  classes.  It 
got  the  mores  from  them  and  in  later  centuries  gave 
those  mores  authority  and  extension,  and  this  is  the  origin 
and  historical  source  of  the  Christian  family.  The 
Pharisees  are  credited  with  introducing  common  sense 
into  domestic  relations.  They  made  the  Sabbath  an 
occasion  of  "domestic  joy,"  bringing  into  increasing 
recognition  the  importance  and  dignity  of  woman  as 
the  builder  and  guardian  of  the  home.  They  also  set 
aside  the  seclusion  of  women  at  childbirth,  in  spite  of 
the  law.^  A  leader  of  the  Pharisees  introduced  the 
Ketuhah,  or  marriage  document,  "to  protect  the  wife 
against  the  caprice  of  the  husband."  The  Shammaites 
would  not  permit  a  wife  to  be  divorced  except  on  sus- 
picion of  adultery,  but  the  Hillelites  allowed  more  easy 
divorce,  for  the  "welfare  and  peace  of  the  home."  -  The 
ancient  Romans  practiced  pure  monogamy,  but  after 
they  developed  a  rich  leisure  class,  in  the  second  cen- 
tury B.C.,  they  developed  a  luxurious  polygamy.     The 

1  Lev.  12  :  4-7;  15  :  19-24.  2  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  IX,  663  f. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  53 

traditions  which  came  down  into  the  Christian  church 
were  confused  and  inconsistent  and  various  elements 
have  from  time  to  time  got  the  upper  hand  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  last  nineteen  hundred  years.  Gide  says: 
"In  a  word,  the  law  of  the  gospel  accomplished  a  radical 
revolution  in  the  constitution  of  the  family.  It  broke 
domestic  tyranny  and  recomposed  the  unity  of  the 
family  by  uniting  all  its  members  under  mutual  duties. 
It  elevated  and  ennobled  marriage  by  giving  it  a  heavenly 
origin,  and  it  made  of  marriage  a  union  so  intimate  and 
so  holy  that  God  alone  can  break  it."^ 

This  is  a  good  literary  statement  of  what  is  generally 
taught  and  popularly  believed,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
verify  it.  We  cannot  tell  what  was  the  origin  of  our 
modern  pair-marriage,  but  it  grew  up  in  the  mores  of 
the  humble  classes  in  which  Christianity  found  root. 
In  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era  the  leading 
classes  at  Rome  went  through  rapid  corruption  and  decay, 
but  the  laboring  classes  had  little  share  in  this  life.  Chris- 
tian converts  could  easily  hold  aloof  from  it.  Dimrig 
the  first  frn]|-  c^ntnrirn  Cbn'stin^°  K^li/^y^rj  timf  tVi^  \xrnr](^ 
was  about  to  perish,  and  evidentlv  this  belief  affected  the 
whole  philosophy  of  life,  for  marriage  lost  sense  andjbhe 
procreation  of  children  lost  interest.^  It  also  helps  to 
explain  the  outburst  of  asceticism  and  extravagant  be- 
havior, such  as  the  renunciation  of  conjugal  intimacy  by 
married  people.  Paul  also,  as  is  well  known,  discusses 
the  renunciation  of  marriage,  but  he  speaks  with  remark- 
able restraint,  and  urges  objections.  John  of  Asia  Minor 
appears  in  tradition  as  the  apostle  of  virginity,  and  the 
glorification  of  virgins^  confirms  this  view  of  his;  but 

^  Etude  sur  la  condition  privee  de  la  Femme  dans  le  droit  ancien  et  moderne, 
195. 

2  This  may  be  seen  in  I  Cor.,  chap.  7.  '  Apoc.  14:4. 


54       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

it  is  something  quite  different  from  this  when  false 
teachers  are  said  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  to  hinder  mar- 
riage.^ Procreation  as  such  was  considered  sin,  and  the 
cause  of  death's  domination.  Christ  came  to  break  away 
from  it. 2  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  the  idealizing 
of  Christian  motherhood'^;  woman  may  fall  into  sin,  but 
shall  be  saved  through  child-bearing.  Sexual  impulse  is 
a  foul  frenzy,  something  devilish^;  stories  of  the  lust  of 
the  devil  and  his  companions  after  beautiful  women  make 
up  the  gnostic  romances.  The  horribleness  and  insatiable- 
ness  of  the  sensual  passions  are  illustrated  by  all  sorts  of 
terrible  tales. ^  It  may  indeed  have  happened,  as  the 
Acts  of  Thomas  report,  that  bride  and  bridegroom  from 
the  very  marriage-day  renounced  wedlock,  and  man  and 
wife  separated  from  one  another;  in  particular,  the 
continually  recurring  narratives  of  a  converted  wife 
avoiding  common  life  with  her  unbelieving  husband  seem 
to  be  taken  from  life.  We  have  the  express  witness, 
not  only  of  Christian  apologists,  but  also  of  the  heathen 
physician  Galen,  that  among  the  Christians  many  women 
and  men  abstained  all  their  life  from  the  intercourse  of 
sex.  It  is  not  possible  for  us  to  estimate  the  actual 
spread  of  this  kind  of  absolute  renunciation.® 

On  the  one  hand  the  women  are  little  thought  of.  In 
the  Clementine  homilies  (3  :  22)  it  is  expressly  declared 
that  the  nature  of  woman  is  much  inferior  to  that  of 
man.  W^omen,  except  the  mother  of  Clement,  play 
almost  no  role  in  this  romance.^  Professor  Donaldson  ^ 
shows  the  error  of  supposing  that  Christianity  raised  the 

1 1.  Tim.  4  :  3. 

2  Satornil  apud  Iren.,  i,  34.  3;  Tatian,  ibid.,  38.  1;  Gospel  of  the  EgjT)tians. 

3 1  Tim.  2  :  15.  *  Act  Job.,  113,  213. 

"DobschUtz,  E.  von:  Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church,  261,  262. 

^  Ibid.  7  ji^id^^  263. 

^  Contemporary  Review,  September,  1889. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  55 

status  of  women.  "It  is  rather  a  formulation  due  to 
dogmatic  than  historical  interests  to  assert  that  the 
worth  of  women  came  to  recognition  jSrst  in  Christianity 
and  in  Christianity  from  the  very  beginning."  ^ 

Renan  says  that  Christianity,  in  the  second  century 
of  the  Christian  era,  "gave  complete  satisfaction  to  just 
those  needs  of  imagination  and  heart  which  then  tor- 
mented the  populations"  around  the  Mediterranean.  It 
offered  a  person  and  an  ideal,  and  made  no  such  demand 
on  credulity  as  the  old  mythologies  which  had  now  lost 
their  sense.  It  joined  stoicism  in  hostility  to  idols  and 
bloody  sacrifices,  and  the  faith  in  Jesus  superseded  ritual. 
Renan  thinks  it  a  wonder  that  Christianity  did  not  sooner 
win  control,  but  at  Rome  all  the  civil  maxims  were 
against  it.^  The  latest  scholars  also  recognize  the  strong 
rivalry  between  Christianity  and  Mithraism. 

Tertullian  (born  160  a.d.)  was  an  extremist  among 
Christian  ascetics,  but  he  was  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
influential  men  of  his  time.  Addressing  women  he  says  ^ : 
"Woman,  thou  shouldst  always  be  dressed  in  mourning 
and  in  rags,  and  shouldst  not  offer  to  the  eyes  anything 
but  a  penitent  drowned  in  tears  and  thus  shouldst  thou 
pay  ransom  for  thy  fault  in  bringing  the  human  race  to 
ruin!  Woman,  thou  art  the  gate  by  which  the  demon 
enters!  It  was  thou  who  corruptedst  him  whom  Satan 
did  not  dare  to  attack  in  face  [man] .  It  is  on  thy  account 
that  Jesus  Christ  died."  It  was  the  doctrine  of  the 
church  fathers  who  lived  about  400  a.d.  that  marriage 
is  a  consequence  of  original  sin,  and  that,  but  for  the 
first  sin,  God  would  have  provided  otherwise  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  human  species.^     "Let  us  cut  up  by 

^  Zscharnack,  L. :  Der  Dienst  der  Frau  in  den  ersten  Jahrhunderten  der 
christlichen  Kirche,  5.  ^  Rgnan,  E.:  Marc-Aurele,  582-85. 

^  De  Cultu  Feminarum,  I,  1.  *  See  Chrysostom:  De  Virginitate,  I,  282. 


56       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GR.\HAM  SUININER 

the  roots,"  said  Jerome,  **the  sterile  tree  of  marriage. 
God  did  indeed  allow  marriage  at  the  beginning  of  the 
world,  but  Jesus  Christ  and  Mary  have  now  consecrated 
virginity."  Virginity  thus  furnished  the  ideal  in  the 
church,  and  not  honest  wedlock. 

Juvenal  and  Tacitus  give  us  pictures  of  Roman  (hea- 
then) society  in  the  first  centuries  of  the  Christian  era 
which  would  make  us  doubt  if  there  was  any  family  at 
all,  but  some  of  our  later  historians  have  well  pointed 
out  that  we  ought  not  to  take  the  statements  in  Juvenal 
and  Tacitus  as  characteristic  of  all  Roman  society.  Let 
me  quote  two  or  three  passages  from  Dill  about  Roman 
women  of  the  empire:  "Tacitus,  here  and  there,  gives 
glimpses  of  self-sacrifice,  courageous  loyalty,  and  human- 
ity, which  save  his  picture  of  society  from  utter  gloom. 
The  love  and  devotion  of  women  shine  out  more  brightly 
than  ever  against  the  background  of  baseness.  Tender 
women  follow  their  husbands  or  brothers  into  exile,  or 
are  found  ready  to  share  their  death.  Even  the  slave 
girls  of  Octavia  brave  torture  and  death  in  their  hardy 
defence  of  her  fair  fame.  There  is  no  more  pathetic 
story  of  female  heroism  than  that  of  Politta,  the  daughter 
of  L.  Vetus.  .  .  .  Vetus  himself  was  of  the  nobler  sort 
of  Roman  men,  who  even  then  were  not  extinct.  Wlien 
he  was  advised,  in  order  to  save  the  remnant  of  his  prop- 
erty for  his  grandchildren,  to  make  the  emperor  chief 
heir,  he  spurned  the  servile  proposal,  divided  his  ready 
money  among  his  slaves,  and  prepared  for  the  end. 
When  all  hope  was  abandoned,  father,  grandmother,  and 
daughter  opened  their  veins  and  died  together  in  the 
bath.  .  .  . 

"The  bohemian  man  of  letters  [Juvenal]  had  heard 
many  a  scandal  about  great  ladies,  some  of  them  true, 
others  distorted  and  exaggerated  by  prurient  gossip,  after 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  57 

passing  through  a  hundred  tainted  imaginations.  In 
his  own  modest  class,  female  morality,  as  we  may  infer 
from  the  Inscriptions  and  other  sources,  was  probably 
as  high  as  it  ever  was,  as  high  as  the  average  morality  of 
any  age.  There  were  aristocratic  families,  too,  where 
the  women  were  as  pure  as  Lucretia  or  Cornelia,  or  any 
matron  of  the  olden  days.  The  ideal  of  purity,  both  in 
men  and  women,  in  some  circles  was  actually  rising.  In 
the  families  of  Seneca,  of  Tacitus,  of  Pliny,  and  of 
Plutarch,  there  were  not  only  the  most  spotless  and 
high-minded  women,  there  were  also  men  with  a  rare  con- 
ception of  temperance  and  mutual  love,  of  reverence  for 
a  pure  wedlock,  to  which  S.  Jerome  and  S.  Augustine 
would  have  given  their  benediction.  Even  Ovid,  that 
*  debauchee  of  the  imagination,'  writes  to  his  wife,  from 
his  exile  in  the  Scythian  wilds,  in  the  accents  of  the 
purest  affection.  ... 

"Dion  Chrysostom  was  probably  the  first  of  the  an- 
cients to  raise  a  clear  voice  against  the  traffic  in  frail 
beauty  which  has  gone  on  pitilessly  from  age  to  age. 
Nothing  could  exceed  the  vehemence  with  which  he 
assails  an  evil  which  he  regards  as  not  only  dishonoring 
to  human  nature,  but  charged  with  the  poison  of  far- 
spreading  corruption.  Juvenal's  ideal  of  purity,  there- 
fore, is  not  peculiar  to  himself.  The  great  world  was 
bad  enough;  but  there  was  another  world  beside  that 
whose  infamy  Juvenal  has  immortalized.  .  .  . 

"From  the  days  of  Cornelia,  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi, 
to  the  days  of  Placidia,  the  mother  of  Honorius,  Roman 
women  exercised,  from  time  to  time,  a  powerful,  and 
not  always  wholesome,  influence  on  public  affairs.  The 
politic  Augustus  discussed  high  matters  of  state  with 
Li  via.  The  reign  of  Claudius  was  a  reign  of  women  and 
freedmen.     Tacitus  records,  with  a  certain  distaste  for 


58       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  innovation,  that  x\grippina  sat  enthroned  beside 
Claudius  on  a  lofty  tribunal,  to  receive  the  homage  of  the 
captive  Caractacus.  Nero  emancipated  himself  from  the 
grasping  ambition  of  his  mother  only  by  a  ghastly  crime. 
The  influence  of  Csenis  on  Vespasian  in  his  later  days 
tarnished  his  fame.  The  influence  of  women  in  provin- 
cial administration  was  also  becoming  a  serious  force.  .  .  . 
Thus  Juvenal  was  fighting  a  lost  battle,  lost  long  before 
he  wrote.  For  good  or  evil,  women  in  the  first  and 
second  centuries  were  making  themselves  a  power."  ^ 

The  Christian  emperors  made  the  dower  of  the  wife 
not  simply  the  property  of  the  two  spouses.  It  was  the 
endowment  of  the  new  household,  a  sort  of  reserve  fund 
which  the  law  assures  to  the  children  which  they  would 
find  intact  in  spite  of  the  ruin  of  their  family,  if  it  should 
occur.  The  dower  was  offset  also  by  the  gift  ^propter 
miptias  which  the  man  must  give.  The  law  also  pro- 
vided that  the  dower  and  the  gift  propter  nuptias  should 
be  equal  and  that  the  spouses  should  have  the  same 
rights  of  survivorship.-  These  seem  to  be  distinct  im- 
provements on  the  dotal  system,  but  that  system  has 
dropped  out  of  popular  use  in  modern  times  and  the 
advantage  of  this  legislation  has  been  lost  with  it. 

The  family  was  more  affected  by  the  imperial  consti- 
tutions of  the  fourth  century,  which  enacted  the  views 
and  teachings  of  the  clergy  of  that  time.  Constantine 
endeavored  to  put  an  end  to  concubinage,  and  the  power 
of  mothers  over  their  children  as  to  property  and  mar- 
riage was  made  equal  to  that  of  fathers.^  It  appears 
that  the  collapse  of  the  ancient  society  and  the  decay  of 
the  old  religion  with  the  rise  of  Christianity  and  Mith- 
raism  with  new  codes  of  conduct  and  duty  produced 

1  Dill,  S. :  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  48,  49,  76,  77, 
81.  2  Gide:  I.e.,  215.  ^  Cod.  Theod.,  IV,  9. 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  59 

anarchy  in  the  mores,  which  are  the  everyday  guides  of 
men  as  to  what  they  ought  to  do.  On  the  one  side  we 
find  asceticism  and  extreme  rigor  and  then  by  the  side 
of  it,  in  the  Christian  church,  extravagant  license  and 
grotesque  doctrine.  What  element  conquered,  and  why, 
it  seems  impossible  to  say.  The  society  of  western 
Europe  emerged  from  the  period  of  decay  and  rejuvena- 
tion in  the  tweKth  century  with  some  wild  passions  and 
dogmas  of  commanding  force.  Overpopulation  produced 
social  pressure  and  distress  with  the  inevitable  tragedy 
in  human  affairs.  The  other  world  was  figured  by  un- 
restrained imagination  and  religion  went  back  to  primi- 
tive daimonism. 

Out  of  this  period  came  the  canon  law.  "Of  all  civil 
institutions,  marriage  is  the  one  which  the  canon  law 
most  carefully  regulated,  and  this  is  the  idea  from  which 
all  its  prescriptions  were  derived;  viz.,  marriage  is  a 
necessary  evil  which  must  be  tolerated,  but  the  practice 
of  which  must  be  restrained."^  The  doctrine  of  this 
law  is  that  "woman  was  not  made  in  the  image  of  God. 
Hence  it  appears  that  women  are  subordinated  to  men, 
and  that  the  law  meant  them  to  be  almost  servants  in 
the  household."  2  From  this  starting-point  the  law  went 
on  rationally,  although  it  contained  two  inconsistent 
ideas,  the  merit  of  wedlock  and  the  merit  of  celibacy. 
The  product  of  such  inconsistency  was  necessarily  base. 
Some  parts  of  the  literary  record  which  remain  to  us 
would  lead  us  to  believe  that  the  whole  society  was  brutal 
and  vicious,  but  when  we  think  of  the  thousands  of 
families  who  died  without  ever  making  a  mark  on  the 
record  we  must  believe  that  domestic  virtue  and  happi- 
ness were  usual  and  characteristic  of  the  society.  The 
best  proof  of  this  is  presented  by  the  efforts  at  reform 

*  Gide,  I.e.,  202.  ^  Can.  13-19,  caus.  xxxiii,  qu.  5. 


60      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

throughout  the  fifteenth  century  and  the  vigor  of  the 
reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  hot  disputes 
between  Protestants  and  Cathohcs  turned  chiefly  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  mass  and  on  sacerdotal  claims,  but  they 
contained  also  an  element  of  dissatisfaction  with  inherited 
mores  about  marriage  and  the  family.  The  Protestants 
denounced  the  abuses  which  had  grown  up  around  the 
monasteries  and  the  gratuitous  misery  of  celibacy.  They, 
however,  lost  the  old  ideas  about  marriage  and  divorce 
and  the  Catholics  denounced  them  for  laxity  and  vice. 
At  the  Council  of  Trent,  in  1563,  the  Cathohcs  made  a 
new  law  of  marriage,  in  which  they  redefined  and  strength- 
ened the  ritual  element. 

Out  of  all  that  strife  and  turmoil  our  modern  family 
has  come  down  to  us.  The  churches  and  denominations 
are  now  trying  to  win  something  in  their  rivalry  with 
each  other  by  the  positioli  they  adopt  in  regard  to  mar- 
riage and  divorce  and  the  family.  The  family  in  its 
best  estate,  now  among  us,  is  a  thing  which  we  may 
contemplate  with  the  greatest  satisfaction.  WTien  the 
parents  are  united  by  mutual  respect  and  sincere  affec- 
tion and  by  joint  zeal  for  the  welfare  of  their  children, 
the  family  is  a  field  of  peace  and  affection  in  which  the 
most  valuable  virtues  take  root  and  grow  and  character 
is  built  on  the  firmest  foundation  of  habit.  The  family 
exists  by  tradition  and  old  custom  faithfully  handed  on. 
Our  society,  however,  has  never  yet  settled  down  to 
established  order  and  firm  tradition  since  the  great  con- 
vulsion of  the  sixteenth  century.  Perhaps  the  family 
still  shows  more  fluctuation  and  uncertainty  than  any 
other  of  our  great  institutions.  Different  households 
now  differ  greatly  in  the  firmness  of  parental  authority 
and  the  inflexibility  of  filial  obedience.  Many  nowadays 
have  abandoned  the  old  standards  of  proper  authority 


THE  FAMILY  AND  SOCIAL  CHANGE  61 

and  due  obedience.  The  family  has  to  a  great  extent 
lost  its  position  as  a  conservative  institution  and  has 
become  a  field  for  social  change.  This,  however,  is  only 
a  part  of  the  decay  of  doctrines  once  thought  most  sound 
and  the  abandonment  of  standards  once  thought  the 
definition  of  good  order  and  stability.  The  changes  in 
social  and  political  philosophy  have  lowered  the  family. 
The  family  has  not  successfully  resisted  them.  Part  of 
the  old  function  of  the  family  seems  to  have  passed  to 
the  primary  school,  but  the  school  has  not  fully  and 
intelligently  taken  up  the  functions  thrown  upon  it.  It 
appears  that  the  family  now  depends  chiefly  on  the  virtue, 
good  sense,  conception  of  duty,  and  spirit  of  sacrifice  of 
the  parents.  They  have  constantly  new  problems  to 
meet.  They  want  to  do  what  is  right  and  best.  They 
do  not  fear  change  and  do  not  shrink  from  it.  So  long 
as  their  own  character  is  not  corrupted  it  does  not  appear 
that  there  is  any  cause  for  alarm. 


THE  STATUS  OF  WOMEN  IN  CHALDEA, 
EGYPT,  INDIA,  JUDEA,  AND  GREECE 
TO  THE  TIME  OF  CHRIST 


Ill 

THE  STATUS  OF  WOMEN  IN  CHALDEA,  EGYPT, 
INDIA,  JUDEA,  AND  GREECE  TO  THE  TIME 
OF  CHRIST 

[ 1909  ] 

TN  general,  the  status  of  women  has  been  controlled, 
-*■  in  all  civilization  up  to  the  highest,  by  their  power 
to  help  in  the  work  of  life.  Where  women  have  had 
important  functions  they  have  been  valued;  where  they 
have  needed  protection  and  support,  and  have  not  been 
able  to  contribute  much,  they  have  been  treated  with 
contempt.  If  the  economic  situation  is  strong,  so  that 
each  man  can  pay  a  good  price  for  a  wife,  girls  are  valu- 
able; in  the  contrary  case  female  infanticide  arises.  If 
the  women's  contribution  to  the  food  supply  is  essential, 
women  are  well  treated;  while  if  the  men  are  warlike 
meat-eaters,  they  treat  women  as  drudges,  tempering  the 
treatment  with  respect  for  them  as  necessary  mothers 
of  warriors.  Among  nomads  the  status  of  women  is  low, 
and  women,  children,  and  the  aged  are  regarded  as  bur- 
dens. The  two  former  are  necessary,  but  all  are  treated 
capriciously.  Under  agriculture  women  win  a  position 
of  independent  cooperation.  When  towns  are  built 
women  incur  dangers  on  the  streets  and  complications 
arise;  their  position  in  rural  life  is  then  far  more  free  than 
in  towns.  Public  security  in  the  latter  once  more  changes 
the  case.  When  women  are  valued  for  grace  and  beauty 
and  are  objects  of  affection,  not  means  of  gain,  they  win, 
as  compared  with  earlier  stages.     An  Arabic  Jew  of  the 

[65] 


66      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GKAHAM  SUMNER 

tenth  century,  Ibrahim  Ibn  Jakub,  says  of  Poland  at 
that  time  that  grain  was  cheap  and  the  bride-price  for 
wives  high.  Therefore,  if  a  man  had  many  daughters, 
he  was  rich;  if  he  had  many  sons  he  was  poor.^  The 
interplay  of  interests  under  the  forms  of  material  gain, 
sex-passion,  and  vanity  is  here  most  complicated  and 
fierce;  but  the  interference  of  philosophy  and  religion  is 
noticeably  slight.  The  phases  are  many,  and  there  is 
not  a  feeling  of  the  human  heart  which  does  not  bear 
upon  the  sex -relation  in  one  way  or  another.  Masculine 
love  of  rule  and  domination,  and  masculine  generosity 
to  an  object  of  affection,  have  modified  every  status. 
Fuegians  prefer  boys,  who  when  they  grow  up  will  be  a 
means  of  strength  and  protection  to  their  parents. ^  The 
Amarr-Bambala  celebrate  the  birth  of  a  boy  with  a  ban- 
quet; boys  will  become  the  strength  of  the  country  as 
hunters  and  warriors.^  The  Ossetes  celebrate  the  birth 
of  boys  only.^  Such  is  the  usual  sentiment,  but  in  fre- 
quent cases  girls  are  preferred.  The  Basutos  find  it  a 
financial  calamity  if  a  woman  bears  all  boys,  for  girls  are 
salable  and  constitute  a  capital.^  In  Kamerun  a  girl  is 
preferred  because  she  will  soon  bring  a  bride-price.® 
Amongst  Hindus,  "when  a  son  is  born  there  is  great 
rejoicing  in  the  family  and  friends  come  with  their  con- 
gratulations, but  on  the  birth  of  a  daughter  there  are 
no  sounds  indicative  of  gladness  in  the  house."  ^  AMien 
a  boy  is  born  the  conch  shell  is  blown  to  call  all  the 
neighbors  to  rejoice;  when  a  girl  is  born  the  conch  shell  is 

*  Geschichtschreiber  der  deutschen  Vorzeit,  XXXIII,  141. 
'A  Voice  from  South  America,  XIII,  201. 

'  Vannutelli,  L.,  e  Citemi,   C:  L'Omo,   195.     This  tribe  is  located  about 
SS**  E.,  5^  N. 

*  Haxthausen,  A.  F.  von:  Transkaukasia,  II,  54. 

6  Archivio  per  la  Antrop.,  XXXI,  459.  « Globus,  LXXXVI,  393. 

MVilkins,  W.  J.:  Modem  Hinduism,  339. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  67 

silent  and  neighbors  offer  condolences. ^  "It  is  believed 
by  an  average  Hindu  that  a  male  child  is  the  fruit  of 
the  propitiation  of  ancestors."  ^  The  Aryans  thought 
daughters  a  sorrow,  sons  the  father's  pride  and  glory. ^ 

The  status  of  women  is  therefore  a  symptom  of  the 
mores  because  all  the  interests  and  feelings  of  man  con- 
verge in  it.  It  furnishes  one  of  the  most  prominent 
illustrations  of  the  traditional  persistence  of  the  mores 
through  ages,  even  in  spite  of  changes  in  interests,  and 
of  the  ultimate  triumph  of  interests  in  the  mores.  The 
phenomena  are  intricate  and  perplexing,  but  it  is  certain 
that  we  can  never  understand  them  unless  we  follow 
those  indications  in  them  which  show  us  the  mores  as 
their  ultimate  explanation. 

The  remotest  stage  of  civilized  society  which  is  known 
to  us  is  that  represented  in  the  laws  of  Hammurabi  as 
existing  in  the  Euphrates  valley  2500  years  before  Christ. 
In  those  laws  men  and  women  appear  to  be  on  an  equal- 
ity of  personal  rights.  Three  classes,  wives,  concubines, 
and  slaves,  are  recognized.*  The  laws  of  Hammurabi  and 
the  laws  of  Moses  point  back  to  a  common  law  of  the 
Semitic  peoples  of  Western  Asia  (Miiller  traces  this  out), 
and  the  society  is  evidently  an  old  one,  with  well-estab- 
lished folkways,  which  are  codified  in  these  laws. 
Winckler^  is  able  to  show,  from  the  position  of  the 
vernal  equinox  in  the  signs  of  the  zodiac,  that  Chal- 
dean culture  must  date  back  to  the  fifth  millennium 
B.C.,  and  Barton  fixes  dates  as  far  back  as  6000  B.C. 
The   code   of    Hammurabi  is  elaborate  and  systematic, 

1  Wilkins,  W.  J.:  Modern  Hinduism,  10. 

2  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bombay,  V,  72. 
'  Zimmer,  H. :  Altindisches  Leben,  318. 

^  The  story  of  Abraham,  Sarah,  and  Hagar  conforms  exactly  to  the  law 
of  Hammurabi  (Miiller,  D.  H.:  Die  Gesetze  des  Hammurabis,  140). 
^  Die  Babylonische  Kultur,  etc.,  30. 


68      ESSAYS  OF  \MLLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  so  it  can  hardly  have  been  the  first  one.  Back  of 
it  there  must  have  been  a  long  period  of  usage  and  cus- 
tom. It  is  assumed  in  the  laws  of  Hammurabi  that  a 
man  will  have  but  one  wife,  but  as  to  concubines  and 
slaves  he  arranges  his  affairs  as  he  judges  expedient  for 
his  own  welfare.  The  laws  define  the  rights  of  the  par- 
ties in  certain  contingencies,  and  thus  make  wedlock  a 
legal  status,  not  a  contract.  The  status,  however,  is 
plainly  the  product  of  mores  which  have  been  matured 
through  a  long  period.  The  marriage  gifts  also  show 
that  long  usage  had  produced  elaborate  customs.  The 
bridegroom  pays  a  bride-price  (a  survival  of  primitive 
purchase),  but  he  also  gets  a  dowry  with  his  wife;  fur- 
thermore the  bride's  father  gives  her  a  gift  which  is  a 
peculium  of  hers  —  pin  money  —  and  the  groom  also 
gives  her  a  present.  Men  can  repudiate  their  wives  at 
will,  but  they  must  provide  for  the  wives  if  the  latter 
are  not  guilty.  If  the  woman  is  childless,  the  relation 
has  failed  of  its  primary  purpose  and  is  dissolved  as  a 
matter  of  course.  A  woman  who  has  borne  a  child  to 
a  man,  even  if  she  is  only  a  slave,  has  a  claim  on  him 
and  security  by  his  side.  Women  can  also  leave  their 
husbands,  if  the  latter  fail  of  the  duties  of  a  husband. 
There  were  consecrated  women  under  religious  vows,  but 
not  vowed  to  virginity,  and  public  women.  Muller^ 
thinks  that  perhaps  these  two  classes  are  priests  who 
dress  in  woman's  dress  and  women  who  dress  in  man's 
dress  —  two  classes  of  hierodules.  The  former  were  pro- 
vided for  under  a  system  which  was  equivalent  to  life- 
annuity.2  Among  the  Tel-el-Amarna  tablets^  (1500  B.C.) 
there  is  a  story  of  a  god  and  his  wife.     He  abuses  her, 

*  Gesetze  des  Hammurabis,  144. 

^  Winckler,  H. :  Die  Gesetze  Hammurabis,  Konigs  von  Babylon  um  2250 
V.  Chr.,  22.  3  xo.  LXXXVI. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  69 

but  when  she  remonstrates  they  make  up  the  quarrel 
and  "whatsoever  she  wished  to  have  done  was  done  from 
that  time  forth  forever  more." 

The  laws  of  Hammurabi  show  that  the  problems  of 
matrimony  were  the  same  2500  years  before  Christ  that 
they  are  now,  and  have  been  ever  since.  It  is  asserted 
that  the  excavations  of  Telloh  show  that  the  mother- 
family  existed  in  Chaldea  in  the  third  millennium  B.C.; 
that  the  wife  was  "goddess  of  the  home,"  and  that  she 
could  expel  her  husband  from  it.^  Later,  perhaps 
through  Semitic  influence,  the  man  got  control  and  the 
institutions  of  the  father-family  were  fully  developed; 
e.g.,  patria  potestas,  sacrifices  by  the  father  to  ancestors. 
A  son  could  take  only  a  concubine,  not  a  wife,  without 
the  father's  consent.  A  slave  woman  would  resent  it 
if  her  master  took  no  notice  of  her;  the  popular  poetry 
represented  her  case,  and  there  was  reason  to  fear  her 
arts  and  magic.^ 

In  the  old  Babylonian  kingdom  the  husband  could 
dismiss  his  wife  at  will  by  giving  her  a  bill  of  divorce- 
ment, and  frequent  injunctions  not  to  do  it  show  that  it 
often  occurred;  consequently  the  woman  was  powerless 
and  rightless  against  her  husband,  although  her  dignity 
and  authority  in  the  house  and  over  her  children  were 
great.  If  repudiated  she  could  marry  again. ^  Repu- 
diated wives,  however,  were  the  "strange  women"  of 
antiquity;  wandering  adventuresses,  without  husbands 
or  status  where  they  were  met  with,  and  living  by  vice.^ 
As  wealth  and  social  activity  increased  in  the  Euphrates 
valley,   polygamy  became  commoner,   women  were  se- 

^  Harper's  Magazine,  No.  524,  201. 

2  Maspero,  G. :  Histoire  Ancienne  des  Peuples  de  rOrient,  I,  735. 

^  Meissner,  B.:  Beitrage  zum  Altbabylonischen  Privatrecht,  14. 

*  Erman,  A. :  iEgypten  und  .^gyptisches  Leben  im  Alterthum,  I,  223. 


70       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

eluded  more  and  more,  and  they  lost  their  primitive 
independence  of  status.  In  Chaldea  all  women  of  the 
higher  classes  were  cloistered  in  the  harem  and  never 
appeared  by  the  side  of  husbands  and  brothers  as  they 
did  in  Egypt. ^  The  harem  system,  at  least  for  Western 
Asia  and  Europe,  originated  here.  The  contracts  of  the 
period  of  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  glory  show  that 
wives  were  then  rarely  bought;  one  such  contract  only 
from  that  period  is  known,  but  the  terms  in  it  are  more 
crassly  commercial  than  in  the  contracts  of  the  old  Baby- 
lonian period.^  A  wife  brought  a  dowry  to  her  husband, 
or  there  were  no  gifts,  or  each  father  stated  in  the  contract 
what  he  would  give  to  the  young  people;  if  there  was 
a  dowry  the  ownership  remained  in  the  wife,  but  the 
husband  had  the  use;  if  a  man  refused  his  approval  to 
the  marriage  of  his  son,  the  woman  whom  the  son  took 
became  a  slave.  Married  women  could  do  business  and 
make  contracts  without  the  intervention  of  their  hus- 
bands in  any  way.^  A  very  important  device,  which 
helped  to  produce  monogamy,  was  the  stipulation  in  the 
contract  that,  if  the  man  took  a  second  wife,  he  should 
pay  a  specified  amercement.  Many  contracts  have  been 
found  in  which  slave  concubinage  and  prostitution  are 
provided  for  in  the  most  matter-of-fact,  commercial 
terms. ^  The  Assyrians  were  fierce  and  cruel;  the  Baby- 
lonians were  more  poetical,  industrial,  and  artistic.^  The 
former  represent  on  their  monuments  very  rarely  any 
domestic  scenes;  a  queen  is  once  shown  feasting  with  the 
king,^  but  the  only  other  women  on  the  monuments  are 

»Maspero:/.c.,  I,  707.  2  ;^j;arx,    V.:    Die  Stellung   der   Frauen  in 

Babylonien  gemass  den  Kontrakten  aus  der  Zeit  von  Nebukadnezar  bis 
Darius,  in  Beitrage  zur  Assyriologie,  IV,  6.       ^  Ibid.,  11,  30,  49. 

*  Kohler,  J.,  und  Peiser,  F.  E.,  Aus  dem  babylonischen  Rechtsleben,  I,  7,  8; 
IV,  28  ff. 

^Rogers,  R.  W.:  A  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  II,  316. 

^  Rawlinson,  G. :  Five  Great  Monarchies,  I,  492. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  71 

captives.  Female  charms  are  rarely  noticed.  We  must, 
however,  note  that  the  monuments  are  all  from  public 
buildings.^  In  Babylonia  every  woman  must,  once  in 
her  life,  submit  to  a  stranger,  in  the  temple  of  Melitta 
(Venus),  for  money,  which  was  put  in  the  temple  treasury. 2 
Wherever  women  are  treated  with  tyranny  and  cruelty, 
and  are  denied  rights,  that  is,  redress,  they  kill  their 
husbands.  In  the  laws  of  Hammurabi  a  woman  who 
killed  her  husband  was  to  be  either  hanged  or  impaled, 
the  meaning  of  the  word  being  uncertain.^  With  increas- 
ing wealth  and  the  distinction  of  classes,  the  mores  for 
rich  and  poor  diverged,  for  women  who  had  property 
could  defend  their  interests.  They  held  and  adminis- 
tered property,  made  contracts,  etc.  In  the  poem  of 
Gilgamesh,  the  hero,  addressing  the  ghost  of  his  friend 
and  enumerating  the  miseries  of  the  dead,  says:  "Thou 
canst  no  longer  embrace  the  wife  whom  thou  lovest,  nor 
beat  the  wife  whom  thou  hatest."  ^  We  must  take  this 
to  represent  the  mores  of  the  highest  classes.  Women  of 
the  lower  classes  in  Chaldea,  whether  legitimate  wives 
or  not,  went  about  the  streets  freely  unveiled,  while  those 
of  the  upper  classes  lived  in  seclusion,  or,  if  they  went 
out,  were  surrounded  by  attendants.^  In  all  societies 
women  of  the  poorer  classes  have  to  encounter  annoy- 
ances and  have  to  protect  themselves,  while  seclusion 
becomes,  for  the  richer,  a  badge  of  superiority  and  a 
gratification  of  vanity.  Usages  which  were  devised  to 
cherish  and  pet  women  become  restraints  on  their  liberty 
and  independence,  for  when  they  are  treated  as  unequal 
to  the  risks  and  tasks  of  life  by  men  who  take  care  of 
them,  the  next  stage  is  that  the  men  treat  them  as  in- 

^  Tiele,  C.  P. :  Babylonische-Assyrische  Geschichte,  596. 

2  Herodotus,  I,  199.  '  Miiller:  Gesetze  des  Hammurabis,  128. 

*Maspero:  /.c,  I,  588.  ^  Ibid.,  739. 


72       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

ferior  and  contemptible,  and  will  not  grant  them  dignity 
and  respect.  ^Vhen  they  escape  responsibility  they  lose 
liberty.  Nevertheless,  the  customs,  if  introduced  by  the 
higher  classes,  spread  downward  by  imitation;  so  it  must 
have  been  with  clositering  and  veiling.  Men  got  security 
without  care,  women  got  the  sense  of  refinement  and 
elegance  and  of  aristocratic  usage;  the  interest  of  men 
and  the  vanity  of  women  thus  cooperated  to  establish 
the  folkways  which  lowered  the  status  of  the  latter. 

In  the  early  Aryan  society  the  status  of  a  wife  depended 
on  whether  she  was  childless,  bore  daughters,  or  bore 
sons.  In  the  first  case  she  was  blamed,  being  considered 
guilty,  and  was  treated  accordingly;  in  the  last  case  she 
enjoyed  honor. ^ 

In  that  form  of  the  religion  of  India  which  appears  in 
the  laws  of  Manu,  and  in  the  Mahabharata  (about  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era),  fathers  chose  husbands 
for  their  daughters  and  proposed  the  marriage,  but 
women  also  proposed  to  men  who  pleased  them.  Manu 
allow^s  them  to  choose,  but  disapproves  of  it  because  the 
motive  would  be  sexual  desire,  and  for  the  same  reason 
he  classes  love  marriages  as  a  bad  fom^rof  marriage. - 

"Husband-selections"  were  pubhc  ceremonies  at  which 
the  suitors  of  princesses  entered  into  competition  for  them, 
although  the  woman  could,  to  some  extent  at  least,  set 
aside  the  result.^  Devayani  was  given  as  a  wife  by  her 
father  to  Yayati;  he  also  gave  her  maid  with  her,  telling 
Yayati  to  honor  her,  but  not  to  make  her  his  wife.  Y^ayati 
begot  two  sons  by  his  wife  and  three  by  the  maid,  and 
therefore  Devayani  went  home  to  her  father,  saying: 
*' Yayati  has  learned  what  duty  is  [from  the  Veda]  and 
yet  he  has  committed  sin."  ^     In  the  Nal  episode  the 

» Ihering,  R.:  The  Evolution  of  the  Aryan,  343.  2  m   39, 

»  Holtzmann,  A.:  Indische  Sagen,  I,  254.  « Ibid.,  II,  108. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  73 

hero,  charmed  by  the  consent  of  the  heroine,  promises 
her  life-long  fidelity.^  "The  best  medicine  of  the  physi- 
cians is  not  so  good  for  a  man,  in  any  ill,  as  a  faithful 
and  beloved  wife."  ^  There  are,  in  the  poem,  very  strik- 
ing love  stories,  especially  about  the  fidelity  and  sacrifice 
of  lovers,  but  one  woman  says  that  a  wife  turns  away 
from  a  husband  who  has  cherished  her  as  soon  as  he  gets 
into  trouble.  A  little  trouble,  it  is  said,  outweighs  in  the 
minds  of  women  long  happiness;  they  have  fickle  hearts, 
and  no  great  virtues  can  win  them  to  fidelity.^  The  law 
of  India  is  full  of  hostile  expressions  against  the  female 
sex;  it  not  only  puts  them  in  a  position  of  inferiority  to 
men,  but  even  refuses  them  the  position  of  persons  en- 
dowed with  independent  rights.  Manu*  says:  "It  is  the 
nature  of  woman  to  seduce  man  in  this  world";  "women 
are  able  to  lead  astray  in  this  world,  not  only  a  fool, 
but  even  a  learned  man,  and  to  make  him  a  slave  of 
desire  and  anger."  A  woman  is  to  be  always  under 
tutelage;  she  can  have  no  property,  give  no  testimony, 
maintain  no  suit,  make  no  contracts,  and  conduct  no 
affairs.  The  books,  however,  contain  also  expressions  of 
praise  of  women,  and  these  fundamental  principles  are 
traversed  to  some  extent  by  more  humane  ideas.  "  Where 
women  are  honored  there  the  gods  are  pleased,  but  where 
they  are  not  honored  no  sacred  rite  yields  reward";  "in 
that  family  where  the  husband  is  pleased  with  his  wife 
and  the  wife  with  her  husband,  happiness  will  assuredly 
be  lasting."  ^  In  the  early  philosophical  period  women 
were  freely  admitted  to  hear  and  share  in  the  discussion 
of  theological  and  philosophical  questions.® 

The  law-givers  conceive  of  woman  as  a  necessary  evil. 

iHoltzmann,  A.:  Indische  Sagen,  II,  18.  ^  Manu,  II,  213. 

2  Ibid.,  II,  27.  ^  Ibid.,  II,  266.  6  Ibid.,  Ill,  56,  60. 

6  Hopkins,  E.  W.:  The  Religions  of  India,  382-384. 


74       ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

She  is  the  soil  which  man  requires  to  produce  the  desired 
offspring  of  marriage.  This  is  one  of  the  many  cases  in 
which  the  status  of  woman  has  been  influenced  by  the 
accepted  notions  about  the  respective  shares  of  the  sexes 
in  procreation.  Marriage  is  the  only  sacrament  in  India 
in  which  woman  has  a  share.  The  essentials  of  the  wed- 
ding are  the  ceremonial  of  joining  hands  and  taking  seven 
steps  together  around  the  sacred  fire  with  recital  of  for- 
mulas of  blessing.  The  ceremony  was  entirely  domestic 
and  the  parties  married  themselves.  Marriage  by  pur- 
chase is  one  of  the  honorable  forms,  but  Manu  says^: 
"No  man  who  knows  the  law  must  take  even  the  smallest 
gratuity  for  his  daughter;  for  a  man  who,  through  avarice, 
takes  a  gratuity  is  a  seller  of  his  offspring."  The  bride- 
price  is  to  be  construed  otherwise.  Other  texts  recognize 
this  form  of  marriage  with  less  reserve.  Jolly  says  that 
the  apparent  revulsion  against  purchase  was  not  in  the 
mores,  but  was  a  symptom  of  a  more  friendly  tone  of 
mind  of  the  lawgiver  toward  women.  In  southern  India 
purchase  is  at  the  present  time  almost  the  only  form  of 
marriage.  In  the  Vedic  h^mms  the  relation  of  husband 
and  wife  is  represented  as  one  of  intimate  affection,  con- 
fidence, and  cooperation.  The  place  of  the  wife  was 
especially  marked  by  the  fact  that  she  participated  with 
her  husband  in  the  household  sacrifices,  and  in  the  house 
she  was  in  authority  over  all  the  inmates.  Only  one 
could  occupy  this  position.  Manu's  -  precepts  for  a  wife 
are  that,  although  the  husband  is  destitute  of  virtue,  or 
seeks  pleasure  elsewhere,  she  is  to  regard  him  as  a  god, 
and  is  to  make  no  vow  or  sacrifices  apart  from  him. 
Manu  also  expresses  the  "one  flesh"  idea:  "Learned 
Brahmins  propound  this  maxim  likewise:  *The  husband 
is  declared  to  be  one  with  the  wife.'"  ^ 

1  III,  51.  2  7^jj.^  V,  154.  3  Ibid.,  IX,  45. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  75 

The  jurists  expressed  this  mystical  unity  in  the  provi- 
sions that  man  and  wife  could  not  go  surety  for  each 
other,  bear  witness,  contract  debts,  maintain  suits,  or 
divide  property  with  each  other.  These  are  necessary 
corollaries  of  the  "one  flesh"  doctrine.  In  respect  to 
joint  property  there  has  been  an  important  development 
toward  the  independence  of  women. ^  In  the  wedding 
ceremony  the  groom  led  the  bride  around  the  domestic 
fire-altar  three  times,  saying:  "I  am  male;  thou  art 
female.  Come,  let  us  marry.  Let  us  possess  offspring. 
United  in  affection,  illustrious,  well-disposed  toward  each 
other,  let  us  live  for  a  hundred  years."  ^  Although  this 
formula  was  here  directed  only  to  procreation,  it  is  an 
interesting  historical  parallel  to  the  Roman  formula  and 
to  a  German  formula,  which  latter  ones  had  relation  to 
rights. 

"We  shall  not  err  if  we  understand  that  women  in 
Iranian  antiquity  had  substantially  the  same  status  as 
in  Vedic  India,  or  amongst  the  ancient  Germans,  or  in 
the  Homeric  age  of  Greece.  In  all  these  cases  we  meet 
with  the  same  conditions"^;  that  is  to  say,  that  in  the 
ultimate  forms  of  civilized  society  the  status  of  women 
which  we  find  is  the  same. 

In  the  Zendavesta  the  sexes  appear  equal  in  rights 
and  honor,  but  they  never  were  so  in  fact  in  historical 
times.  Zoroaster,  according  to  the  tradition,  had  three 
wives. ^  Each  man  had  concubines  and  slaves  according 
to  his  means  and  his  own  judgment  of  his  personal  wel- 
fare, as  was  the  case  throughout  the  whole  ancient  world. 
The  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  Iranian  social  system 

^  Jolly,  J. :  Ueber  die  rechtliche  Stellimg  der  Frauen  bei  den  alten  Indem, 
etc.,  421-439;  Zimmer,  H.:  Altindisches  Leben,  315-318. 
2  Monier- Williams,  M.:  Brahmanism  and  Hinduism,  363. 
^  Geiger,  W. :  Ostiranische  Kultur,  etc.,  243. 
*  Jackson,  A.  V.  W. :  Zoroaster,  20. 


76      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

was  the  injunction  to  practice  the  closest  incestuous  mar- 
riages as  the  most  meritorious.^  This  is  a  very  interesting 
case  of  the  survival  of  primitive  mores  into  a  later  religion, 
and  the  reason  for  it  was  intense  desire  to  maintain  the 
blood-purity  of  a  caste,  a  desire  which  had  become  a 
predominant  motive. ^  For  this  reason,  although  cour- 
tesans existed,  intercourse  with  them  was  strongly  dis- 
approved, and  the  mores  imposed  strict  rules  on  women 
of  the  nation.^  A  man  was  praised  for  giving  his  daughter 
in  marriage  and  ordered  to  do  so  as  penance  for  his  own 
sins;  thus  the  interests  of  the  daughter  might  be  sub- 
ordinated to  those  of  the  father.  The  wedding  ceremony 
was  a  union  of  hands  with  prayers  and  formulas  of  words, 
in  which,  and  in  the  ceremonies  of  transfer  to  her  hus- 
band's house,  the  bride  is  spoken  of  as  the  comrade  and 
equal  of  her  husband  and  as  his  companion  in  the  house- 
hold.^ On  the  one  hand,  these  rules  imposed  on  a  man  a 
status-wife,  and  on  the  other  hand,  as  in  all  such  cases, 
they  caused  love  unions  with  foreigners  and  defeated 
their  own  purpose.  Marriage  was  encouraged  and  pre- 
miums were  given  for  large  families,  which  seems  to  show 
that  the  premiums  were  necessary.^  There  are  historical 
cases  in  which  Persians  showed  very  great  attachment 
to  their  wives. ^ 

The  status  of  women  in  the  Old  Testament  is  that 
which  has  been  described  as  prevailing  in  Western  Asia 
in  the  earlier  form.  Very  little  is  said  about  women; 
they  play  no  role,  and  have  no  function  in  religion.  Ruth 
is  a  heroine  because  when  she,  as  a  widow,  had  a  right 

*  Darmestetter,  J.:  The  Zendavesta,  126. 

2  Tiele-Gerich:  Geschichte  der  Religion  im  Altertum,  etc.,  II,  1,  165. 

3  Geiger,  W.:  Ostiranische  Kultur,  337.  "  Ibid.,  241. 

"Spiegel,  F.:  Eranische  Alterthumskunde,  III,  679;  Darmestetter,  J.: 
Zendavesta,  I,  46. 

^Herodotus,  9,  111;  Plutarch:  Artaxerxes. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  77 

to  return  to  her  home  and  people,  she  chose  to  remain 
with  her  husband's  family  and  nation  and  to  adhere  to 
his  religion.  Esther  is  a  political  heroine,  while  Athaliah 
and  Jezebel  seize  power,  as  women  did  upon  occasion  m 
other  states.  In  the  Proverbs  we  hear  what  a  good  thing 
a  good  woman  is;  what  a  bad  thing  a  bad  woman  or  wife 
is.  This  might  all  be  equally  well  said  of  husbands,  but 
it  is  not  said,  because  it  was  not  in  the  mores  to  think 
of  men  in  the  same  light.  The  model  woman  ^  is  an 
industrious  housewife.  Woman  is  a  coadjutor  to  man, 
though,  according  to  the  story  in  Genesis,  she  brought 
woe  upon  him.  "The  status  of  woman  is  characterized 
by  the  fact  that  she  was  alw^ays  the  property  of  some 
man";  she  was  the  property  of  her  father,  who  sold  her 
to  her  husband.  Her  duty  was  to  bear  children  and  do 
household  work.  The  man  was  not  bound  to  exclusive 
fidelity;  the  woman  was,  under  penalty  of  death.  A 
priest  might  not  mourn  for  his  wife,^  for  she  was  not  as 
near  to  him  as  his  family  kin,  including  his  unmarried 
sister.  This  excluded  his  married  sister,  as  if  she  went 
into  the  kin  of  her  husband,  which  is  inconsistent.  A 
widow  did  not  inherit  from  her  husband,  but  the  heir 
must  care  for  her.  A  woman's  vow  required  the  con- 
firmation of  her  father  or  husband.^ 

A  man  could  have  concubines  and  slaves;  it  was,  how- 
ever, a  very  important  effect  of  the  later  strict  endogamy 
of  the  Jews  that  these  could  be  only  Jews,  and  were, 
therefore,  in  a  protected  status,  and  were  nationally 
equal  to  the  wife;  but  the  case  of  a  war-captive,  necessarily 
a  foreigner,  at  the  mercy  of  the  captor,  is  allowed  for.* 
Polygamy  was  the  current  usage  ^ ;  divorce  was  easy  at 

1  Prov.  31.  2  Lev.  21  :  1;  Ezek.  44  :  25. 

'  Num.  30 :  4;  cj.  Buhl,  D.  F.:  Die  socialen  Verhaltnisse  der  Israeliten,  30. 

*Deut.  21  :  10.  ^  j^eut.  21  :  15. 


78       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  will  of  the  man;  motherhood  was  the  chief  function 
of  women.  Throughout  the  canon  of  the  Old  Testament 
violation  of  the  sex-taboo  is  earnestly  condemned  and 
made  a  subject  of  warning  and  of  prohibition  in  the  name 
of  Yahveh.  Sex-vice,  including  abortion,  exposure  of 
infants,  and  child  sacrifice,  are  set  forth  as  the  distin- 
guishing traits  of  the  heathen,  and  an  abomination  to 
Yahveh.  The  prophets  were  constantly  fighting  the 
mores  of  the  Jews,  which  coincided  with  those  of  the 
other  people  of  Western  Asia.^  The  Jews  who  returned 
to  Judea  were  a  selection  of  those  who  had  the  strongest 
national  feeling  and  who  thought  that  the  captivity 
had  been  a  chastisement  of  Y^ahveh.  In  the  rabbinical 
period,  with  intenser  national  feeling,  the  antagonism  to 
heathenism  and  sex- vice  was  even  more  strongly  empha- 
sized, and  they  often  hold  the  first  place  in  ethical 
exhortation  and  discussion.  The  importance  attached, 
in  the  New  Testament,  to  eating  things  offered  to  idols 
might  not  seem  comprehensible,  but  it  is  conjoined  with 
denunciation  of  sex- vice,  and  sex- vice  and  heathenism 
went  together,  and  were  the  antipodes  of  Christianity. 
These  sentiments  entered  deeply  into  the  Jewish  mores 
of  the  rabbinical  period,  while  the  standard  of  marital 
life,  the  conception  of  matrimony,  and  the  status  of 
women  remained  about  on  the  level  of  the  surrounding 
nations.  W^omen  were  held  to  be  inferior,  as  agents  of 
seduction  and  evil;  a  father  or  husband  had  a  hard  task 
to  keep  daughter  or  wife  from  evil. 

In  Esdras  ^  is  an  interesting  argument  to  prove  that 
woman  is  the  most  powerful  thing  amongst  men;  she  is 
alluring  and  may  be  wicked,  and  is  classed  with  wine  as 
a  cause  of  ruin  to  men.^     All  the  wisdom  of  all  the  ages 

^Ezek.  8:6-11;  22:9-11. 

2 1,  3  :  13.  =•  Eccles.,  chaps.  9,  19,  25,  and  26. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  79 

and  nations  reiterates  the  same  few  propositions.  The 
woman  was  held  to  strict  fidelity  in  marriage,  but  not 
the  man.  The  rule  of  divorce  in  Deut.  24:  1  was  greatly 
enlarged,  although  sects  differed  about  it.  Hardly  any- 
where in  the  rabbinical  writings  do  we  find  any  high 
conception  of  wedlock^;  in  the  rabbinical  period  there 
was  a  tendency  to  depreciate  all  sex-relations,  as  a  con- 
sequence of  the  strong  antagonism  to  heathenism;  there 
is  even  some  glorification  of  virginity  and  of  long  widow- 
hood ,  2  and  a  legend  that  Rachel  withdrew  from  conjugal 
life  and  chose  continency.^  The  Essenes,  beginning  in 
the  second  century  B.C.,  rejected  marriage  and  depended 
on  new  adherents  to  continue  their  sect.  The  Therapeuts 
did  not  reject  marriage,  but  they  honored  celibacy.^ 
The  Talmudists  said  that  a  man  might  marry  as  many 
wives  as  he  could  support,  but  he  was  exhorted  to  take 
not  more  than  four;  it  appears  doubtful  if  many  men  in 
that  period  (early  centuries  of  the  Christian  era)  took 
more  than  one.^  Polygamy  was  put  under  definite  taboo 
in  1020  A.D.;  women  were  also  given  more  and  more 
definite  right  of  divorce,  and  divorce  by  the  man  from 
caprice  or  malice  was  restrained.  Still  dicta  are  quoted 
which  allow  wide  freedom  of  divorce  to  both.^ 

The  biblical  scholars  ^  now  tell  us  that  the  story  of  the 
creation  of  woman  in  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis  dates 
from  about  775  B.C.  It  is  very  primitive  myth-making. 
The  processes  and  machinery  are  all  described.  So  the 
woman    is  made  out  of   a  rib   of   man,   and   the   man 

»  Cf.  I  Cor.  11  :  9-15.  2  L^te  2  :  36. 

'  Bousset,  D.  W.:    Die  Religion  des  Judenthums  im  neutestamentliclien 
Zeitalter,  401-404. 
*  Ihid.,  443,  445. 

^  Bergel,  J.:  Die  Eheverhaltnisse  der  alten  Juden,  etc.,  10. 
^  Klugmann,  N. :  Die  Frau  im  Talmud,  37-46. 
^  Smith,  H.  P.:  Old  Testament  History. 


80      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

perceives  that  he  and  she  were  "one  flesh."  Then  follows 
the  enigmatical  utterance  that  the  man  shall  leave  father 
and  mother  and  go  to  his  wife.  In  w^hat  social  horizon 
could  that  rule  arise?  Nobody  in  the  father-family  ever 
did  it,  except  heiress-husbands.^  However,  but  for  this 
rule  there  would  be  no  establishment  of  pair-marriage  in 
this  '^xt.  If  the  husband  goes  to  the  wife  he  will  have 
but  one,  unless  it  be  exceptionally  or  by  some  confusion 
of  usages.  The  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  held  to  have 
been  written  not  before  500  B.C.  It  is  very  simple  and 
direct,  and  is  written  as  history,  not  myth;  the  human 
race  is  created  in  two  sexes,  and  nothing  states  or  implies 
pair-marriage.  It  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  man  was 
said  to  go  to  the  woman,  in  opposition  to  almost  universal 
usage,  in  order  to  suggest  pair-marriage.  Then  modern 
men  have  read  their  own  mores  into  these  texts,  and  estab- 
lished such  a  tradition  that  we  do  not  perceive  that  the 
text  does  not  contain  the  institution.  How  could  the 
Jews  practice  polygamy  through  their  whole  history  if 
on  the  first  page  of  the  law  stood  an  injunction  of  pair- 
marriage.^  They  did  not  see  it  there  because  it  is  not 
there. 

The  position  of  women  amongst  the  Jews  at  the  time 
of  Christ  was  what  it  was  generally  in  the  Greco-Roman 
world;  their  place  was  domestic  and  their  chief  function 
was  to  bear  children.  The  New  Testament  Gospels 
contain  very  little  about  women,  but  later  Christian 
hagiology  created  myths  about  the  two  Marj's  and 
Martha  to  satisfy  the  demand.  The  Epistles  contain 
doctrines  of  marriage  which  are  not  fully  consistent. 
One  view  is  that  marriage  is  a  pis  aller  for  sin.^  The 
most  important  question  is  that  of  the  effect  on  a  pre- 

^  As  in  Num.  36. 

^  I  Cor.  7;  the  same  doctrine  appears  in  Rev.  14  :  4. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  81 

existing  marriage  of  conversion  of  husband  or  wife  to 
Christianity.  The  rabbis  held  the  current  contemptuous 
opinion  of  women;  Hillel  is  quoted  as  saying,  "More 
women,  more  witchcrafts."  ^  Woman,  according  to  the 
current  behef ,  was  not  saved  through  the  Law,  but  through 
child-bearing. 2  Philo  gives  as  the  reason  why  the  Essenes 
did  not  marry  that  "a  wife  is  a  selfish  creature,  imr^ioder- 
ately  smitten  with  jealousy,  terrible  at  shaking  to  their 
foundations  the  natural  habits  of  a  man,  and  bringing 
him  under  power  by  continual  beguilements.  For  as  she 
practices  fair  false  speeches  and  other  kinds  of  hypocrisy, 
as  it  were  upon  the  stage,  when  she  has  succeeded  in 
alluring  eyes  and  ears,  like  cheated  servants,  she  brings 
cajolery  to  bear  upon  the  sovereign  mind.  Moreover,  if 
there  are  children  she  begins  to  be  puffed  up  with  pride 
and  license  of  tongue,  and  all  the  things  which  before  she 
speciously  offered  in  a  disguised  manner  in  irony,  she 
now  summons  forth  with  a  more  daring  confidence,  and 
shamelessly  forces  her  way  into  actions,  every  one  of 
which  is  hostile  to  communion.  For  the  man  who  is 
bound  under  spells  of  wife  or  children,  being  made  anxious 
by  the  bond  of  nature,  is  no  longer  the  same  person  toward 
others,  but  is  entirely  changed,  having  become,  without 
being  aware  of  it,  a  slave  instead  of  a  free  man."  ^ 

The  status  of  women  in  Egypt  was  so  free  that  the 
Greeks  ridiculed  the  Egyptians  as  woman-ridden;  Herod- 
otus ^  says  that  the  women  went  to  market  and  the  men 
wove  at  home.  Descent  was  through  women  and  was 
marked  by  the  mother's  name,  which  the  child  bore, 
while  the  tie  of  father  and  child  was  slight.^  In  the 
tombs  of  the  old  kingdom  (before  2000  B.C.)  the  wife  and 

1  Cook,  K.:  The  Fathers  of  Jesus,  II,  127.  2  j  xim.  2  :  15. 

^  Philo:  Apology  of  the  Jews,  frag,  apud  Eusebius;  Cook:  I.e.,  II,  7. 
4  11,  35.  ^Maspero:  I.e.,  I,  51. 


82       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

mother  of  the  deceased  are  represented;  hardly  ever  the 
father.  A  very  peculiar  arrangement  was  that  a  man's 
next  heir  was  his  grandson  by  his  eldest  daughter,  and 
that  a  boy's  next  friend  and  protector  was  his  maternal 
grandfather.  This  arrangement  was  very  ancient  and 
was  deeply  rooted  in  the  mores. ^  The  women  of  the 
harem  of  Thothmes  III  got  up  a  conspiracy  against  him 
(about  1600  B.C.)  and  were  able  to  organize  a  large  force 
of  men  and  officers  in  it.^  From  about  740  B.C.  a  college 
of  priestesses  at  Thebes  became  the  political  authority 
in  that  city,  the  chief  priestess  concentrating  the  political 
power  in  herself.^  Some  of  these  features  of  society  seem 
to  be  survivals  of  the  mother-family,  but  Herodotus  saw 
341  statues  of  successive  priests  in  descent  from  father 
to  son,  which  covered,  as  the  Egyptians  said,  11,340 
years,^  and  would  indicate  father  descent  for  that  period. 
Herodotus  ^  reports  that  each  man  had  but  one  wife, 
"like  the  Greeks,"  but  Diodorus  ^  says  that  only  priests 
were  restricted  to  one.  Kings  certainly  had  more  than 
one  and  probably  great  men  also,  and  there  were  besides 
concubines  and  slaves.  Prostitution  was  in  effect  organ- 
ized in  the  service  of  religion.^ 

In  the  Precepts  of  Ptah-hotep,  which  date  from  about 
2600  B.C.,  it  is  said:  "If  thou  wouldst  be  wise,  rule  thy 
house  and  love  thy  wife  wholly  and  constantly.  Fill 
her  stomach  and  clothe  her  body,  for  these  are  her  per- 
sonal necessities.  Love  her  tenderly  and  fulfill  all  her 
desires  as  long  as  thou  hast  thy  life,  for  she  is  an  estate 
which  conferreth  great  reward  upon  her  lord.  Be  not 
harsh  to  her,  for  she  will  be  more  easily  moved  by  per- 
suasion than  by  force.     Take  thou  heed  to  that  which 

lErman,  A.:  JEgypten,  etc.,  224.  <  Herodotus:  II,  142. 

2  Ibid.,  87.  6  Ibid.,  I,  80.  « II.  92. 

'  Maspero:  I.e.,  Ill,  172.  '  Maspero:  I.e.,  II,  536. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  83 

she  wisheth  and  to  that  to  which  her  desire  runneth,  and 
to  that  upon  which  she  fixeth  her  mind  [and  obtain  it  for 
her],  for  thereby  shalt  thou  make  her  to  stay  in  thy  house. 
If  thou  resistest  her  will,  it  is  ruin  to  thee.  Speak  to 
her  heart  and  show  her  thy  love."  ^  The  extremest 
"friend  of  woman"  in  any  age  might  admit  that  these 
precepts  are  excessive;  if  they  ever  were  approximately 
in  the  mores,  the  derision  of  the  Greeks  did  not  lack 
justification.  A  later  writer  of  unspecified  date  warns 
against  the  "strange  woman"  like  the  writer  of  Prov- 
erbs ^:  "Beware  of  a  strange  woman  who  is  not  known 
where  she  is.  Do  not  look  at  her  when  she  comes  and 
do  not  know  her.  She  is  like  a  current  of  deep  water, 
the  whirling  force  of  which  one  does  not  know.  The 
woman  whose  husband  is  absent  writes  to  thee  every 
day.  If  there  is  no  witness  near  her,  she  rises  and  spreads 
her  net!  O  crime  worthy  of  death  when  one  hears  of 
it."  Have  nothing  to  do  with  her  and  take  a  wife  in 
thy  youth,  because  "the  best  thing  is  one's  own  house," 
and  because  "a  wife  will  give  thee  a  son  like  thyself."  ^ 
In  Egypt  in  the  class  of  nobles  every  woman  "brought 
some  land  to  her  husband  as  dower,  but  daughters  took 
it  away  again,  so  that  the  fortunes  of  a  family  depended 
on  the  proportion  of  females  born  in  it.'*  Each  wife  had 
her  own  house,  given  to  her  by  her  parents  or  her  hus- 
band; thus  there  was  no  conjugal  domicile  and  the  man 
was  not  "head  of  the  family,"  but  a  guest  in  his  wife's 
house.  The  wife  administered  her  own  property  and 
received  a  stipend  from  her  husband;  if  she  contributed 
to  the  expenses,  she  did  so  voluntarily.  In  a  marriage 
contract  of  the  time  of  Ptolemy  III  (247-221  B.C.)  the 
man  promises  not  to  claim  the  authority  of  a  husband, 

1  Budge,  E.  A.  W.:  A  History  of  Egypt,  etc.,  II,  150.  ^  6  :  i^, 

'Ennan,  A.:  ^Egypten,  etc.,  223.  ^Maspero:  I.e.,  I,  300. 


84      ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMXER 

to  give  to  the  woman  slaves  who  are  named,  and  to  let 
her  dispose  of  them  without  interference  from  him;  he 
recognizes  as  hers  all  debts  due  to  her  and  makes  them 
collectible  by  her  agent;  if  the  husband  collects  any  of 
them,  he  promises  to  pay  the  proceeds  to  her  and  to  pay 
her  a  penalty  besides.  In  a  corresponding  document,  by 
a  woman,  she  acknowledges  the  receipt  of  the  marriage 
gift  and  of  her  share  of  the  goods,  and  promises  to  return 
the  same  if  she  is  unfaithful.^  This  last  stipulation  is  an 
exact  inversion  of  the  case  where  the  man,  by  custom  or 
contract,  receives  a  dower  which  he  must  repay  if  he 
repudiates  the  woman.  Erman  ^  thinks  that  conjugal 
relations  were  happy  and  affectionate.  A  widower,  who 
had  been  told  by  a  magician  that  his  second  wife  had 
caused  an  illness  from  which  he  suffered,  wrote  and 
put  in  her  tomb  a  letter  of  remonstrance,  in  which 
he  rehearsed  his  attentions  and  devotion  to  her. 

The  Egyptian  mores  must  be  accounted  for  by  the 
extreme  traditionalism  of  that  people  which  caused  sur- 
vivals of  old  customs  to  persist  by  the  side  of  new  ones. 
Contact  with  Assyrians,  Babylonians,  Persians,  and 
Greeks  produced  change  but  very  slowly,  although 
Egyptian  men  must  have  been  instigated  to  borrow  foreign 
customs  by  all  motives  of  selfish  interest  and  vanity. 
Paturet  ^  thinks  that  he  can  discern  a  change  in  the 
marriage  system  after  about  500  B.C.;  from  a  free  and 
equal  relation  it  became  more  servile  on  the  part  of  the 
woman  and  the  Semitic  notion  that  there  could  be  no 
full  marriage  without  a  property  pledge  was  accepted  in 
Egypt.  Later  the  woman,  without  selling  herself  en- 
tirely, made  a  contract  of  limited  duty.     She  was  lower 

^Paturet,  G.:  La  Condition  juridique  de  la  femme  dans  ancienne  EgJTte, 
42,  50,  54,  72. 

2  /Egypten,  etc.,  I,  217.  3  U  to  20. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  85 

than  if  she  had  sold  herself  permanently  or  given  herself 
away.  "Nothing  in  his  home  experience  had  prepared  a 
Greek  to  see  a  respectable  woman  come  and  go  in  liberty, 
without  veil  and  without  escort,  carrying  a  burden  on 
her  shoulder  instead  of  on  her  head,  like  a  man,  run- 
ning about  the  market,  keeping  shop,  while  her  husband 
or  father  was  shut  up  at  home,  weaving  fabrics,  mixing 
potter's  clay,  and  turning  the  potter's  wheel  or  working 
at  his  trade.  It  was  an  easy  inference  that  the  man  was 
a  slave  and  the  wife  mistress  of  the  family."  ^  Accord- 
ingly, as  soon  as  a  Greek  dynasty  was  seated  on  the 
throne,  we  find  that  Ptolemy  IV  (221-205  B.C.)  made  an 
ordinance  which  restrained  Egyptian  married  women  by 
Greek  law;  gifts  and  contracts  between  man  and  wife 
ceased,  and  the  wife  needed  the  authorization  of  her 
husband  for  her  acts.^  Under  Mohammedanism  in 
Egypt  we  find  the  mores  completely  reversed.  The 
Roman  conquest  and  christianization  acted  to  remold 
Egyptian  mores  as  to  the  status  of  women,  a  change  which 
may  have  been  brought  about  before  Mohammedanism 
came  in.  All  the  conquerors  were  antagonistic  to  the 
Egyptian  mores  in  regard  to  this  matter,  and  they  favored 
the  change,  which  was  in  the  interest  of  men. 

In  Homer  the  relations  of  young  unmarried  persons  is 
free  and  unconventional,  although  there  is  a  code  of 
propriety.  Wives  were  bought  and  the  bargain  is  very 
purely  commercial  in  motive;  fathers  were  also  moved 
by  political  and  dynastic  motives.  The  purchase  con- 
tract and  the  formal  ceremony  distinguished  the  status- 
wife  from  the  concubine;  and  there  were  also  slaves  and 
captives  who  were  at  their  lords'  mercy.  The  concubine 
or  slave,  who  had  no  status,  was  chosen  for  love.  "When 
the  chief  wife  was  also  the  loved  wife,  affection  was  very 

1  Maspero;  I.e.,  Ill,  797.  ^  Paturet;  I.e.,  42. 


86       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

strong  and  true";  the  best  example  is  that  of  Hector  and 
Andromache.  Wives  were  held  to  fidelity:  Penelope  was 
a  heroine;  Clytemnestra  "led  to  bitter  words  against  all 
women."  The  fidelity  of  women  is  a  duty  on  account 
of  the  rights  which  their  masters  have  acquired  in  them 
by  capture  or  purchase;  if  they  violate  it  the  paramour 
must  pay  a  fine.  No  divorce  occurs  in  Homer.  The 
gods  and  goddesses  present  a  picture  of  another  com- 
munity marked  throughout  by  disreputable  conduct  as 
compared  with  the  human  community.^  The  quarrels 
of  Zeus  and  Hera  give  us  a  picture  of  conjugal  life 
which  is  more  distasteful  than  any  presented  as  of 
men.  The  pair  are  vain,  frivolous,  and  jealous,  and 
give  cause  for  jealousy;  their  love-making  is  not  digni- 
fied; they  live  like  a  couple  in  a  French  novel,  who 
have  decided  to  get  on  by  not  demanding  too  much  of 
each  other.  It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  custom 
of  "purchase"  degraded  women;  we  find  that,  in  bar- 
barism, purchase  is  explained  as  a  remuneration  to  the 
father  for  the  expense  of  rearing  the  girl  —  she  is  not 
"bought"  like  a  slave.  Purchase  also  runs  down  through 
all  grades  of  ceremony  and  survival.  Then,  too,  the 
woman's  father  gave  her  a  dowry-like  gift,  a  transaction 
which  shows  that  the  purchase  idea  no  longer  character- 
izes the  relation  of  the  parties,  but  is  a  survival  by  the 
side  of  a  new  conception  of  marriage.  From  a  pecuniary 
point  of  view  the  two  gifts  were  incongruous,  but  as 
regards  the  sentiments  which  determined  their  meaning, 
they  could  well  continue  together.^  The  wooing  in 
Homer  is  simple  and  natural,  open  and  straightforward, 
though  the  language  is  often  naive  and  to  our  usage 
unrefined.  The  mores  are  not  clearly  defined  because  of 
the  military  and  heroic  plane  on  which  the  poems  move. 

*  Keller,  A.  G.:  Homeric  Society,  chap.  V.  2  Od.  I,  277;  II,  53. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  87 

The  women  attend  the  heroes  in  the  bath,  a  custom  which 
to  us  seems  inconsistent  with  the  other  sex  mores  but  it 
illustrates  well  the  power  of  the  mores  to  extend  approval, 
for  the  sake  of  an  interest,  to  an  incongruous  usage.  The 
gods  give  wives,  so  that  marriages  are  made  in  heaven; 
they  bless  the  marriage  of  a  man  who  pleases  them,^  and 
they  give  children.^  "Nothing  is  stronger  and  nobler 
than  when  man  and  wife,  united  in  harmony  of  mind, 
rule  their  house  in  wisdom."^  Achilles  says:  "Every 
brave  and  sensible  man  loves  his  consort."  ^  Cases  occur 
in  which  a  man  renounces  a  slave  woman  out  of  respect 
to  his  wife,^  but  there  are  others  in  which  he  declares 
that  he  prefers  the  slave  woman.®  The  case  of  Penelope 
was  complicated:  it  was  not  sure  that  her  husband  was 
dead;  her  son  was  a  boy,  but  he  grew  to  manhood  and 
became  her  guardian  as  she  had  been  his.  She  was  clever 
and  wise  and  managed  well  a  difficult  situation  the  phases 
of  which  changed  as  time  went  on,  but  always  presented 
new  difficulties.  Telemachus  declared  to  her  with  rude 
plainness  that  he  was  master  ^;  he  told  her  to  go  to  the 
women's  quarters  and  attend  to  the  housework  and  to 
leave  deliberation  to  men.  Thus  he  defined  her  "sphere." 
Hesiod,  as  quoted  in  the  Anthology  of  Stobaeus,^  says: 
"If  a  man  has  had  the  luck  to  get  a  wife  who  suits  him, 
that  is  the  acme  of  good  fortune;  if  he  has  a  bad  one  it 
is  the  worst  disaster."  Menander  is  also  quoted:  "If  we 
rightly  judge  the  matter,  marriage  is  indeed  an  evil,  but 
necessity  imposes  this  evil  on  us." 

Augustine  ^  has  preserved  from  Varro  a  myth  of  early 

lOd.,  XV,  26;  IV,  208. 

2  Ibid.,  IV,  12;  XVI,  117.  3  /j^^f.,  VI,  182-184;  II.,  VI,  407. 

*  II.,  IX,  341-342;  Friedreich,  J.  B.:  Die  Realien  in  der  Iliade  iind  Odyssee, 
197-200;  especially  199  on  the  sex  mores. 

5  Od.,  I,  431;  II.,  IX,  132;  XIX,  261.  ^  II.,  I,  112. 

'  Od.,  I,  356.  8  69.  ^  De  Civitate  Dei,  XVIII,  9. 


88       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Attica.  In  the  time  of  Cecrops  an  olive  tree  suddenly 
appeared  at  one  place  and  water  burst  forth  at  another. 
The  oracle  explained  the  portent  to  mean  that  the  people 
must  choose  between  Minerva  (the  olive  tree)  and  Nep- 
tune (the  spring)  as  patron  of  their  new  city,  Athens. 
Cecrops  summoned  all  the  people,  male  and  female,  for 
women  then  voted,  to  make  their  choice.  The  men 
voted  for  Neptune  and  the  women  for  Minerva,  and  the 
latter  triumphed  by  a  majority  of  one;  at  this  Neptune 
was  angry  and  inundated  Attica.  The  Athenians  pun- 
ished the  women  by  taking  from  them  the  right  to  vote, 
by  abolishing  the  usage  that  children  took  their  names 
from  the  mother,  and  by  depriving  them  of  the  name  of 
Athenian  women.  This  story  seems  to  be  a  myth  em- 
bodying a  tradition  of  the  mother-family  and  accounting 
for  the  change  from  it  to  the  father-family,  with  a  decline 
in  the  societal  position  of  women.  There  are  two  obscure 
but  very  interesting  Greek  myths  in  which  women  rebel 
against  marriage.  The  daughters  of  Proetus  treated  with 
contempt  the  temple  of  Hera,  patroness  of  marriage. 
Aphrodite  punished  them  with  madness,  but  after  wan- 
dering about  they  were  cured  in  the  temple  of  Artemis. 
Their  example  led  Argive  women  to  forsake  their  hus- 
bands and  slay  their  children;  similarly  the  women  on 
Lemnos  despised  Aphrodite  and  slew  their  husbands.^ 
The  myths  suggest  that  the  marriage  institution  was 
such  that   women   revolted   against   it. 

In  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries  a  series  of  lyric 
poets  (Sappho,  Anacreon)  developed  a  strong  erotic  con- 
ception of  love  which  was  passionate  and,  according  to 
later  standards,  vicious. ^  Such  a  sentiment  the  Greeks 
always  understood  by  "love."     They  felt  a  great  joy  in 

1  Farnell,  L.  R.:  The  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  II,  448. 

2  Beloch,  J. :  Griechische  Geschichte,  I,  258. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  89 

living,  were  gay  and  light-hearted,  but  heartless  and 
superficial.  **The  systematic  repression  of  a  natural 
appetite  was  totally  foreign  to  Greek  modes  of  thought"; 
"the  Greek  conception  of  excellence  was  the  full  and 
perfect  development  of  humanity  in  all  its  organs  and 
functions."  ^  To  such  a  scheme  of  life  women  were 
essential,  but  it  offered  them  little  honor.  Simonides  of 
Amorgos  (seventh  century  B.C.)  classified  women,  saying 
that  God  made  of  earth  the  lazy  ones,  of  the  sea  the 
fickle  ones.  Other  classes  Simonides  distinguished  by 
the  animals  whom  they  resembled  in  character;  for  in- 
stance, the  bee  class  was  those  who  were  industrious, 
thrifty,  faithful  —  healthy  mothers  with  grace  and  high 
virtues.2  Aristotle  says  that  in  former  times  all  Greeks 
bought  each  other's  wives.^  Lykurgus  in  Sparta  and 
Solon  in  Athens  ^  adopted  very  low  and  different  policies 
about  the  discipline  and  relations  of  the  sexes;  their 
standpoint  was  that  of  man  or  the  state,  and  woman 
was  used  for  purposes  assumed  to  be  good,  and  in  ways 
assumed  to  be  expedient  and  practicable.  Whether  any 
good  resulted  to  the  male  sex  or  the  state  under  either 
plan  is  very  doubtful,  but  the  women  were  degraded  in 
each  case.  At  Athens,  in  order  to  have  children  of  full 
civil  standing,  it  was  necessary  that  a  man  should  marry 
the  daughter  of  a  citizen,  but  the  women  of  this  class  were 
so  secluded  in  the  women's  apartments,  and  lived  such  a 
remote  life,  that  young  men  could  not  know  young  women. 
Therefore  the  wife  of  full  rank  was  a  status-wife.  In  the 
fifth  century  very  many  Athenians  married  foreign  wives, 
in  spite  of  the  disabilities  which  their  children  would 
incur;    it  seems  evident    that  they  became  acquainted 

^Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  History  of  European  Morals,  etc.,  II,  291;  Mahaflfy, 
J.  P.:  Social  Life  in  Greece,  etc.,  104,  117. 

2  Bergk,  T.:  Griechische  Literaturgeschichte,  II,  197. 

'Politics,  II,  5,  11.  ^Athenaeus:  Deipnos,  25. 


90       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

with  these  women  and  formed  attachments,  which  it  was 
impossible  to  do  with  Athenian  women.  By  the  side  of 
the  legitimate  order  there  came  into  existence  a  class  of 
courtesans,  who  exercised,  by  education,  beauty,  wit, 
grace,  and  coquetry,  the  influence  over  man  which  be- 
longed to  woman,  and  to  which  Greeks  were  especially 
susceptible.  If  Athenseus  may  be  believed,  this  class  was 
very  numerous.  He  gives  a  collection  of  the  bons  viots 
attributed  to  them  and  specifies  the  ones  who  were  in 
more  or  less  enduring  relations  with  all  the  well-known 
men  of  Athens.  While  the  status- wives  were  shut  up  at 
home,  keeping  house  and  nursing  children,  these  love- 
wives  enjoyed  the  society  of  the  men  and  influenced  the 
state;  and  some  of  them  became  famous  in  more  ways 
than  one.  Aspasia  made  a  trade  of  educating  courtesans; 
Socrates  refers  to  her  a  man  whom  he  sought  to  indoc- 
trinate with  higher  doctrines  of  conjugal  duty.i  Cicero^ 
tells  a  story  in  which  she  appears  as  the  instructress  of 
Xenophon  and  his  wife,  showing  them  by  the  Socratic 
method  that  every  man  wants  the  best  wife  and  every 
woman  the  best  husband  possibly  to  be  had;  therefore, 
to  satisfy  each  other,  each  should  strive  to  be  as  good  as 
possible.  She  was,  it  appears,  the  competent  teacher  of 
the  art  of  matrimony,  and  is  credited  with  a  share  in  the 
great  movement  to  emancipate  women.  Aristophanes  ^ 
attributes  the  Peloponnesian  war  to  the  anger  of  Pericles, 
on  her  account,  against  Megareans  who  had  stolen  two 
of  her  courtesans.  Socrates  ^  says  that  she  was  skilled 
in  rhetoric  and  had  taught  many  orators,  including 
Pericles.  Such  were  the  mores  by  the  end  of  the  fifth 
century;  wives  at  home  like  servants,  intellectual  recrea- 

*  Xenophon:  Economicus,  3,  14. 

2  De  Inventione  Rhetorica,  I,  31  (51). 

'  Achamians,  524.  ^  Menexenos,  236. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  91 

tion  sought  in  conversation,  sexual  passion  gratified  in 
dissipation  with  courtesans.  This  ran  through  the  society 
according  to  wealth.  In  an  oration  against  Nesera  it  is 
said:  *'We  have  courtesans  for  pleasure,  concubines  for 
daily  companions,  wives  for  mothers  of  legitimate  chil- 
dren and  for  housekeepers."  ^  This  expressed  exactly  the 
mores  of  that  time.  In  discussing  the  reasons  for  the 
headlong  descent  of  the  Greeks  in  the  third  and  second 
centuries,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  they  were  breeding 
out  their  nationality  by  begetting  children  with  foreigners 
and  slaves,  and  by  family  and  social  mores  which  selected 
against  the  women  of  full  blood. 

The  Greeks  thought  that  a  wise  man  would  never 
confide  entirely  in  his  wife;  therefore  he  never  had  com- 
plete community  of  interest  with  her.  The  reason  was 
the  same  which  would  keep  him  from  community  of 
interest  with  children.  He  looked  to  women  for  the  joy 
of  life  in  all  its  higher  and  lower  forms. 

In  the  tragedies  of  the  fifth  century  general  statements 
about  women  often  occur.  They  are  almost  always  dis- 
paraging. In  iEschylus's  Suppliants  the  king  says:  "A 
woman's  fears  are  ever  uncontrolled,"  and  the  female 
chorus  answers:  "A  woman  by  herself  is  nothing  worth." 
In  the  Agamemnon  Mgisthus  says:  "Guile  is  the  woman's 
function."  Women  have  no  judgment,  but  are  persuaded 
before  the  facts  are  known.  In  the  Seven  against  Thebes 
Eteocles  declares  women  to  be  a  nuisance  in  trouble  and 
prosperity.  They  are  arrogant  when  they  have  power, 
while  in  war-time  they  get  frightened  and  flutter  about 
doing  no  good,  but  helping  the  enemy.  Let  them  be 
kept  out  of  affairs.  "Oh,  Zeus,  what  a  tribe  thou  gavest 
us  in  women!"  In  the  Ajax  Tecmessa,  a  captive,  says 
to  her  lord:  "Since  the  hour  that  made  me  thine  I  live 

1  Quoted  by  Athenaeus,  XIII,  31. 


92       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

for  thee."  In  the  Eumenides  Apollo  asserts  that  woman 
does  not  beget;  she  is  only  nurse;  the  mother  only  cher- 
ishes the  germ.  He  uses  Pallas  as  a  proof  that  one  could 
be  born  without  a  mother,  but  not  without  a  father.  In 
Sophocles's  Trachinian  Maidens  Deianeira,  the  heroine, 
"the  most  real  woman's  soul  that  the  Athenian  drama- 
tists ever  put  upon  the  stage,"  ^  says  that  love  is  invin- 
cible; she  feels  it  herself,  and  so  it  would  be  madness  for 
her  to  blame  her  husband  and  his  new  love,  if  they  too 
have  fallen  under  it  —  "No  shame  to  them  and  it  does 
not  harm  me."  Antigone  says:  "We  must  remember 
that  we  are  only  women  and  cannot  strive  with  men. 
We  are  under  authority." 

In  the  Periclean  age  Athens  had  become  a  great  city, 
and  it  was  hard  for  women  to  move  about  in  it  freely, 
for  they  were  in  need  of  escort  and  protection.  Hence 
they  became  secluded,  especially  in  the  higher  classes; 
in  the  country  they  had  more  important  functions,  con- 
tributed more,  and  therefore  were  more  free.^  Thucydi- 
des  ^  attributes  to  Pericles  the  saying  that  women  are 
best  when  men  never  mention  them,  either  to  praise 
or  blame.  Pericles  himself,  in  his  relation  to  Aspasia, 
"lightly  broke  the  barriers  of  the  conventional  morals 
of  the  time";  "according  to  the  spirit  of  that  age,  the 
natural  right  of  love  must  prevail  over  the  right  of  mar- 
riage which  human  ordinances  had  created.  Deliverance 
from  every  constraint  was  the  effort  of  that  age,  and  it  was 
most  nearly  realized  at  Athens."^  The  current  view  was 
that  marriage  was  a  necessary  evil,  a  business  arrange- 
ment, part  of  the  arrangement  of  an  establishment,  an 
arrangement  as  unsentimental  as  a  contract  to  buy  or 
hire  a  house.     Property  interests  might  make  a  marriage 

iRohde,  E.:  Psyche,  II,  237.  '  11,  45. 

2  Mahaffy,  183.  4  Beloch,  J.:  I.e.,  I,  474. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  93 

between  near  relatives  advantageous,  and  half-brother 
and  sister  by  the  same  father  (not  mother)  might  marry. 
Marriages  of  persons  brought  together  by  affection 
occurred,  but  were  very  rare.  Women  were  married 
young  and  their  will  or  choice  did  not  enter  into  the 
matter.  There  was  no  purchase  after  the  sixth  century, 
but  the  woman  received  a  dowry  from  her  family,  some- 
times with  a  promise  to  double  it  if  she  bore  children. 
If  such  a  dowry  was  not  given,  the  union  was  regarded 
as  hardly  more  than  concubinage,  because  the  man  could 
so  easily  divorce  the  wife  if  he  had  no  dowry  to  restore; 
hence  the  dowry  was  a  security  for  the  woman  against 
his  caprice.^  The  change  from  the  custom  that  the 
suitor  pays  the  father  to  the  custom  that  the  father  pays 
the  suitor  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the  fact  that  suitors 
became  rarer  than  marriageable  girls;  for  the  variations 
in  customs  about  marriage  gifts  are  always  significant  of 
the  conjuncture  of  the  interests  of  the  parties.  Women 
who  disposed  of  themselves  were  those  who  had  no 
dowry,  when  the  custom  was  to  bring  a  dowry  in  marriage. 
The  marriage  in  Greece  was  preceded  by  a  formal  be- 
trothal. The  wedding  consisted  in  the  delivery  of  the 
bride  to  the  bridegroom  by  her  kurios,  the  man  who  had 
authority  over  her.  No  officer  of  church  or  state  had 
any  function,  for  the  proceeding  was  entirely  domestic 
and  belonged  to  the  family;  religious  sacrifices  were 
made  some  days  before  the  wedding,  but  were  incidental, 
and  were  made  for  good  fortune.^ 

The  distresses  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  compelled  the 
Athenians  to  admit  to  citizenship  the  nothoi,  or  children 
of  Athenian  men  by  non-Athenian  mothers.     There  is 

^  Blumner,  H.:  Griechische  Privatalterthiimer,  260-264. 
2  Miiller,  O. :   Untersuchungen   zur  Geschichte  des  attischen  Biirger-  und 
Eherechts,  746. 


94       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

some  evidence  that  they  allowed  men  to  take  two  wives 
each  (e.g.,  Socrates  and  Euripides).^  Possibly  the  public 
necessities  also  forced  them  to  think  of  emancipating 
women,-  for  secluded  wives  could  hardly  take  the  ini- 
tiative in  such  a  movement.  Very  strangely  the  initia- 
tive has  been  ascribed  to  the  courtesans.  That  there 
w^as  such  a  movement  is  best  proved  by  the  ridicule 
which  Aristophanes  poured  out  on  it  in  his  Lysistrata; 
either  somebody  went  so  far  as  to  propose  community  of 
women  or  Aristophanes  meant  to  affirm  that  emancipa- 
tion w^ould  lead  to  that.  In  his  Woman  s  Parliament  he 
developed  the  farcical  element  in  such  a  plan;  evidently  he 
regarded  everything  as  mere  suggestion  for  his  fun-making. 
In  his  Thesmophoria-festival  he  took  up  the  defense  of 
women  against  utterances  in  Euripides's  Hippolytus. 
Hippolytus  is  a  woman-hater  and  celibate,  but  Hera, 
enraged  at  such  rebellion  against  love,  inspires  a  passion 
for  him  in  his  stepmother,  Phaedra.  The  chorus  develops 
the  idea  that  love  is  a  mighty  catastrophe  for  joy  or  ill, 
and  that  Hera  allows  no  contempt  for  it;  love  maddens 
the  hearts  and  deludes  the  senses  of  all  whom  it  attacks. 
The  conception  is  that  of  an  erotic  passion.  The  rela- 
tionship of  the  two  does  not  enter  into  the  tragedy  at 
all,  but  only  that  a  wife  may  fall  into  such  a  passion 
and  be  torn  between  it  and  fidelity  to  her  husband.  The 
result  is  torment  for  Hippolytus,  and  he  vents  his  rage 
on  women.  Why  did  Zeus  ever  create  them  to  man's 
sorrow  on  earth?  They  are  a  curse.  If  more  men  were 
wanted  they  should  have  been  bought.  The  father  gives 
his  daughter  a  dowry  to  get  rid  of  her,  and  then  she  costs 
her  husband  heavily  for  dress,  etc.     He  puts  up  with  her 

^  Miiller,  O.:  Untersuchungen  zur  Geschichte  des  attischen   Biirger-  und 
Eherechts,  795-797. 

2  Bruns,  I:  Frauenemancipation  in  A  then,  19fiF. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  95 

if  he  gains  anything  by  marriage;  if  not,  he  makes  the 
best  of  it.  If  she  is  a  simpleton,  that  is  best.  "Deliver 
me  from  a  clever  one!"  They  plot  wickedness  with  ser- 
vants. He  hates  them  all.  Let  some  one  prove  them 
chaste. 

In  the  tragedies  of  Euripides  the  characters  often  dis- 
cuss women  —  evidently  the  woman  question  had  been 
rising  through  the  century.  In  the  Hekuba  Agamemnon 
remarks:  "I  have  a  contemptuous  opinion  of  the  female 
sex."  Iphigenia  says,  in  Iphigenia  amongst  the  Taurians: 
"A  man  is  a  great  loss  to  his  family,  but  a  woman  is  not 
of  much  account."  Women  sympathize  with  each  other 
and  keep  each  other's  secrets  loyally.  Orestes  says  that 
women  are  clever  at  inventing  tricks,  and  again,  that 
they  have  the  gift  of  winning  sympathy.  In  Iphigenia 
at  Aulis  the  heroine  declares  that  the  life  of  one  man  is 
worth  that  of  ten  thousand  women.  In  the  Hippolytus 
Phsedra  says:  "I  found  out  thoroughly  that  I  was  only 
a  woman,  a  thing  which  the  world  dislikes."  In  the 
Andromache  Andromache  speaks  to  her  maid:  "Thou  art 
a  woman.  Thou  canst  invent  a  hundred  ways,"  and 
again,  "No  cure  has  been  found  for  a  woman's  venom, 
worse  than  that  of  reptiles.  We  are  a  curse  to  man." 
"Men  of  sense  should  never  let  gossiping  women  visit 
their  wives,  for  they  work  mischief."  In  the  Phoenician 
Maidens  one  passage  states:  "It  is  the  nature  of  women 
to  love  scandal  and  gossip."  In  the  Medea  Medea  in 
soliloquy  says  to  herself:  "Thou  hast  cunning.  Women, 
though  by  nature  little  fit  for  deeds  of  valor,  are  expert 
in  mischief,"  and  she  exhorts  Jason,  who  is  a  scoundrel, 
"Thou  shouldst  not  sink  to  the  level  of  us  poor  women, 
nor  meet  us  with  our  own  childishness."  He  says  that 
women  are  weak  and  given  to  tears,  and  that  it  is  natural 
for  a  woman  to  rave  against  her  husband  when  he  is 


96       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

planning  another  marriage  (as  he  is) ;  that  she  could  bear 
his  second  marriage  if  she  had  self-control.  He  says  that 
women  think  all  is  well  if  married  life  is  smooth,  but  that 
men  should  have  been  able  to  get  children  some  other 
way  without  the  existence  of  any  women.  Medea  appeals 
to  Jason's  oaths  and  promises  to  her  which  he  pledged 
with  his  right  hand;  she  would  not  complain  if  she  were 
childless,  but  they  have  children.  The  sneak  answers 
that  he  is  going  to  marry  the  king's  daughter  for  the 
good  of  the  family.  Medea  says:  "He  who  was  all  the 
world  to  me —  my  own  husband  —  has  turned  out  a  villain. 
Women  are  unfortunate.  They  buy  a  husband  at  the 
high  price  and  get  a  tyrant.  It  is  always  a  great  ques- 
tion whether  they  make  a  good  choice.  Divorce  is  dis- 
creditable to  women.  If  we  are  clever  enough  to  manage 
a  husband,  it  is  well;  otherwise  we  may  better  die.  The 
husband  can  go  out,  if  vexed;  the  wife  must  stay  at 
home.  Better  go  through  battle  three  times  than  through 
childbirth  once."  She  is  led  to  discuss  the  status  of 
woman:  "The  dawn  of  respect  to  women  is  breaking. 
They  shall  be  basely  slandered  no  more.  The  ancient 
poets  wrote  much  about  their  faithlessness.  This  shall 
cease.  If  Apollo  had  given  us  the  gift  of  versifying  I 
would  have  answered  them.  History  shows  up  their  sex 
as  much  as  ours."  In  the  Bacchantes  the  question  is 
raised  whether  chastity  is  native  to  women;  if  it  is, 
they  will  not  fall  when  assailed  in  the  mysteries  of  Dio- 
nysus. In  the  Andromache  the  heroine  says  that  a  wife 
must  learn  the  ways  of  her  husband's  country  and  his 
own,  and  not  try  to  impose  the  ways  in  which  she  was 
brought  up.  Her  lord  also  has  taken  a  wife  who  mal- 
treats Andromache,  the  bond-maid.  The  wife  says  to 
her:  "Do  not  bring  amongst  us  barbaric  customs  which 
we  think  crimes.     It  is  a  shame  here  for  a  man  to  have 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  97 

two  wives.  All  men  who  care  to  live  honorable  lives  are 
content  to  devote  themselves  to  one  lawful  love."  Andro- 
mache says  that  for  Hector  she  would  have  borne  a  rival, 
if  Hera  had  charmed  him  with  another  woman,  and  that 
she  often  nursed  his  illegitimate  children  to  spare  him 
annoyance.  The  chorus  affirms  that  a  husband  should  be 
content  with  one  wife  and  not  give  her  rights  to  another. 
In  the  Electra  Clytemnaestra  says  that  she  killed  her 
husband  because  he  brought  home  a  captive  concubine. 
Women  are  fools,  but  if  a  man  humiliates  his  wife,  let 
her  retaliate;  she  is  then  blamed  and  not  he.  Electra 
answers  that  if  a  woman  has  sense,  she  will  always  sub- 
mit to  her  husband;  it  is  not  befitting  for  her  to  insist 
on  rights.  In  the  Trojan  Women  Hekuba  tells  how  she 
behaved  in  wedlock  in  order  to  describe  an  ideal  wife. 
She  stayed  at  home  and  did  not  gossip.  Going  abroad 
gives  a  bad  reputation.  She  was  modest  and  silent 
before  her  husband,  and  knew  when  to  rule  him  and 
when  to  yield  to  him. 

Athenseus  quotes  a  great  many  writers,  of  whom  we 
otherwise  know  nothing,  in  regard  to  love,  marriage, 
and  women.  They  are  nearly  all  contemptuous,  sarcastic, 
or  hostile,  except  where  they  speak  of  women  as  a  means 
of  pleasure.  In  no  case  is  conjugal  affection  described; 
there  is  no  evidence  of  knowledge  or  appreciation  of  it. 

Aristophanes  devoted  three  comedies  to  the  woman 
question.  In  the  Lysistrata  the  women  determine  to 
bring  peace,  and  at  the  end  Lysistrata,  having  brought 
together  representatives  of  Athens  and  Sparta,  reconciles 
them  by  arguments  which  any  modern  historian  would 
say  covered  the  common  sense  of  the  situation  and  do 
credit  to  the  statesmanship  of  Aristophanes.  If  it  was 
conceivable  that  women  could  see  and  urge  such  a  solu- 
tion of  the  case,  great  honor  was  done  them,  and  it  was 


98       ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

most  unfortunate  for  Greece  that  they  were  excluded 
from  diplomacy.  In  the  Thesmophoria-festival  the  female 
chorus  leader  asks  why,  if  women  are  a  curse,  men  woo 
them,  pursue,  guard,  and  watch  them,  and  follow  them 
when  they  go  away.  She  tells  the  men  that  they  rob  the 
public  treasury  and  that  some  of  them  threw  away  their 
arms  in  battle  and  ran.  Bruns^  takes  the  comedies  of 
Aristophanes  as  proof  that  there  had  been  earlier  a  dis- 
cussion of  woman's  right  and  status  which  is  not  in  the 
literature,  and  that  in  this  discussion  it  had  been  pro- 
posed to  admit  them  to  political  functions  and  military 
service. 

Thus  it  appears  that  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  century 
there  was  some  agitation  of  the  question  of  woman's 
status  and  function  in  society.  The  philosophers  of  the 
fourth  century  took  part  in  the  discussion.  The  first 
document  is  the  dialogue  in  Xenophon's  Economicus, 
Ischomachus,  supposed  to  be  Xenophon,  gives  a  rhetorical 
and  artificial  statement.  It  is,  however,  very  remarkable 
that,  even  in  the  way  of  fiction,  any  man  of  that  time 
could  imagine  a  man  making  such  an  attempt  to  get 
upon  a  basis  of  affectionate  confidence  and  cooperation 
with  his  wife,  for  the  story  stands  entirely  by  itself  in 
the  literature.  The  other  participants  in  the  dialogue 
hear  with  astonishment  his  story  of  his  method  with  his 
wife,  and  what  he  tells  of  the  response  of  the  young  woman 
shows  that  she  had  had  no  education  to  enable  her  to 
understand  it;  that  is  to  say,  it  was  entirely  outside  of 
the  mores  of  the  society.  Plato  thought  that  the  question 
was  real,  because  one-half  of  the  state  was  losing  its  effec- 
tive force  and  happiness;  he  wanted  women  educated 
better,  but  he  thought  of  Spartan  ways  with  favor, 
even  those  which  seemed  devised  to  eradicate  feminine 

^  Frauenemancipation  in  Athen,  21. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  99 

modesty  and  sex  propriety.  In  this  way  his  discussion 
became  a  Utopian  speculation  which  had  no  value.  ^  In 
the  Republic  he  advances  to  a  more  sweeping  theory,  2 
denying  that  any  fundamental  difference  of  capacities  or 
capabilities  goes  with  the  sex  difference.  He  lays  stress 
on  the  difference  of  muscular  strength  only.  From  these 
dogmatic  assumptions  he  argues  that  women  should 
have  the  same  education  as  men  and  share  all  social  and 
political  functions  with  them. 

Aristotle  also  thought  that  women  should  be  better 
educated,  though  he  regarded  them  as,  by  nature,  inferior 
to  men,  and  therefore  created  to  obey.  In  the  Problemata 
he  asks  why  it  is  considered  more  direful  to  kill  a  woman 
than  a  man,  although  any  male  is  better  than  any  female.^ 
In  the  History  of  Animals  he  says  that  a  woman  is 
more  compassionate,  tearful,  envious,  complaining,  fond 
of  slander,  quarrelsome,  despondent,  imprudent,  unvera- 
cious,  confiding,  vindictive,  watchful,  less  active,  and 
requires  less  food.  In  this  time  the  bankruptcy  of  the 
Spartan  system  was  known  to  all  the  world;  the  Spartan 
women  were  useless  and  in  the  way  in  war,  and  the  popu- 
lation had  fallen  off  so  that  the  state  was  ruined  by  a 
single  lost  battle.  Women  held  the  property,^  and  were 
free,  bold,  intemperate,  and  luxurious.^  Aristotle  ended 
by  putting  women  back  just  where  they  were  according 
to  the  existing  mores.  Their  powers  were  limited;  they 
had  a  sphere  which  was  suitable  for  them;  let  them  do 
their  duty  in  it.^ 

If  we  may  judge  of  the  views  of  Menander  by  the 
fragments,''  he  held  very  adverse  judgments  about 
women  and  marriage.     Jerome,  in  his  first  tract  against 

1  Laws,  781,  805,  806.  ^  Politics,  II,  9,  2. 

2  Fifth  and  following  books.  ^  ji^id,^  jy,  8,  23;  15,  13. 

3  Prob.,  XXIX,  11.  « Ibid.,  I,  5,  7;  I,  13,  3  and  9;  III,  4,  7. 
'  In  Stobseus  LXX. 


100     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Jovinianus,  quotes  Theophrastus,'^  where  the  question  is: 
"Ought  a  wise  man  to  marry?"  The  prehminary  answer 
is:  "Yes,  if  the  woman  is  pretty,  of  good  morals  and  breed- 
ing, and  of  honest  parents,  and  if  the  man  is  in  good 
health  and  rich.  These  conditions  are  rarely  all  fulfilled. 
Hence  the  wise  man  will  not  marry."  The  author  pro- 
ceeds to  justify  this  opinion  by  very  derogatory  assertions 
about  women:  "Whatever  defect  she  has,  you  do  not 
know  it  until  after  the  marriage.  Nothing  else  do  you 
buy  without  a  trial.  A  wife  is  not  shown  until  she  is 
given  to  you,  lest  she  may  not  suit  you."  "Women  are 
frivolous,  vicious,  intriguing,  exacting,  and  selfish.  None 
of  the  reasons  given  for  marriage  will  bear  examination." 
None  of  these  philosophers  had  any  influence  to  make 
the  sex  mores  better;  they  had  no  criticism  of  the  existing 
mores,  no  conception  of  the  evils,  no  plan  of  reform.  At 
most  the  contrast  with  Sparta  suggested  some  reflections. 
We  may  gather  together  the  features  of  these  mores  into 
a  distinct  picture  as  follows.  Women  were  valued  to  pro- 
create children  for  their  husbands  and  the  state;  also  to 
serve  the  pleasure  of  men.  They  were  "  by  nature  "  inferior. 
They  had  no  schools  and  their  education  depended  on 
chances  at  home,  while  they  lacked  the  stimulus  of 
social  intercourse  with  men.  Waives  and  courtesans  were 
both  injured  by  their  juxtaposition  and  competition 
and  by  paederasty,  which  was  not  recognized  as  a  vice.^ 
Beloch  says  that  it  is  an  unfounded  prejudice  that  Greek 
women,  in  the  classical  period,  had  an  unworthy  position, 
or  that  their  status  had  fallen  since  the  Homeric  period; 
but  he  lays  too  much  stress  on  purchase  in  Homer.  ^  He 
further  argues  that  the  hetceroe  gave  back  to  Greek  women 

^  Friedlander,  L.:  Sittengeschichte  Roms,  I,  276,  refers  this  tract  to  Seneca, 
and  it  is  given  amongst  the  fragments  (de  nwptiis)  at  the  end  of  Seneca's 
works,  ed.  Haase. 

2 Beloch,  J.:  I.e.,  I,  232.  '  Ihid.,  471. 


STATUS  OF  WOMEN  lOl 

in  the  Hellenistic  period  equality  with  men,  and  with 
that  their  role  was  played  out.^  The  lot  of  wives  was 
endurance,  submission,  and  sacrifice  to  the  egoism  of 
men,  although  there  were  some  noble  exceptions,  due  to 
the  personal  character  either  of  the  man  or  the  woman. 
Culture  bore  on  only  one-half  of  the  nation.  The  "vir- 
tues" of  a  woman  were  in  the  main  the  same  as  those 
of  a  slave;  the  parallel  in  our  time  would  be  found  in 
servants.  Although  there  was  no  harem,  the  women's 
apartments  were  retired  and  secluded.  The  women  and 
the  men  would  meet  in  the  house  more  or  less,  and  the 
men  might  be  satisfied  with  the  women  and  like  them. 
The  latter  were  supposed  to  be  where  they  belonged, 
performing  the  functions  which  were  incumbent  on  them. 
They  could  go  out  only  rarely  and  for  especial  reasons. 
Religious  festivals  gave  them  their  only  important  oppor- 
tunity to  go  abroad  and  see  public  activity.  The  purchase 
of  supplies  and  visiting  were  also  recognized  occasions, 
and  one  or  two  passages  are  cited  which  recognize  walk- 
ing exercise  as  a  reason  for  going  out.  The  laws  of 
Solon  helped  to  establish  the  tendency  of  the  mores  in 
this  direction.^  No  woman  could  go  out  unless  she  had 
passed  her  youth.  The  turtle  was  the  symbol  of  woman; 
seclusion  and  silence.  It  is  still  an  open  question  whether 
Athenian  status- wives  went  to  the  theatre  to  see  the 
tragedies,  but  it  is  believed  that  they  never  were  present 
at  the  comedies.  In  this  matter  also  the  hetcerce  were 
free.  In  the  Womaji's  Parliament  of  Aristophanes  ^  there 
is  reference  to  a  law  requiring  that  men  and  women  sit 
separately.  It  must  be  taken  as  a  very  significant  symp- 
tom of  the  mores  of  a  community  if  some  comedies  of 
Aristophanes  ever  could  have  been  presented  before  a 
public  audience  even  of  men  only;  much  more  if  any 

1  Beloch,  J.:  I.e.,  473.  2  piutarch:  Solon.  'Line  21. 


102'    ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMXER 

women  were  present;  and  if  the  latter  were  hetcBrce  the 
case  might  be  worse.  We  miss  the  evidence  of  the  refined 
taste  and  aesthetic  sense  of  limits  with  which  the  Greeks 
have  been  credited.  Every  woman  had  a  "lord"  and  was 
under  tutelage.  No  respectable  woman  would  appear 
at  table  with  men,  even  with  her  husband's  guests  in 
his  own  home,  and  it  was  a  great  breach  of  propriety 
for  a  man  to  enter  another  man's  house  when  the  women 
were  there  and  the  man  away.  There  were  strict  rules 
of  propriety  of  conduct  and  language  in  the  presence  of 
women,  but  the  motive  was  respect  for  the  men  to  whom 
they  belonged,  not  for  themselves.  In  spite  of  all  this, 
adultery  of  wives  is  spoken  of  as  a  familiar  fact;  also 
women  often  ruled.  In  Sparta  they  were  said  to  do  so 
commonly;  but  this  was  in  part  because  the  system  con- 
centrated land  and  other  property  in  their  hands. ^  In 
the  fourth  century  there  were  some  women  who  were 
distinguished  for  the  kind  of  learning  which  was  current 
in  the  period.  One  woman  of  good  birth  at  Athens, 
about  320  B.C.,  married  a  cynic  for  love  and  followed 
him  into  his  "beggar-life";  her  parents  disapproved  but 
did  not  forbid.  There  were  also  some  women  in  that 
period  who  TVTote  poetry.^  After  the  conquest  of  Alex- 
ander there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said  about  the  sex  mores 
of  Greece,  for  in  the  general  relaxation  of  all  mores,  all 
social  energy,  and  all  national  traditions,  the  family  fell 
into  the  general  form  which  prevailed  throughout  the 
Hellenistic  world.  The  facts  which  we  have  found  show 
that  the  Greek  family  would  easily  undergo  modification 
toward  the  Oriental  form. 

^  Plutarch:  Agis  and  Lykurgus;  Becker-Hermaim :  Charikles,  last  chapter. 
2Beloch,  J.:  I.e.,  II,  442. 


WITCHCRAFT 


IV 

WITCHCRAFT 

[1909] 

IN  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century,  when  the 
Church  considered  its  victory  over  heresy  complete, 
the  doctrine  of  witchcraft  was  perfected.  Complaint 
was  made  in  1340  that  Thomas  Aquinas  had  not  stated 
when  witchcraft  was  heresy.  The  Inquisition  undertook 
the  solution  of  this  question,  using  the  results  of  the 
scholastics  to  sustain  the  different  notions  and  ward  off 
the  objections  of  common  sense  until  the  juristic  notion 
of  the  witch  was  developed,  which  led  directly  to  epidemic 
persecution.^  Mediaeval  philosophy  never  felt  the  neces- 
sity of  modifying  a  position  on  account  of  a  concession 
which  it  had  been  obliged  to  make.  It  left  the  incon- 
sistent statements  side  by  side  until  they  became  familiar 
and  current  together.  About  1430,  from  the  confessions 
of  witches,  a  comprehensive  statement  was  made  up  of 
the  tenets  of  the  "new  sect,"  as  witches  were  called: 
the  sabbath,  the  flight  on  a  broomstick,  the  renunciation 
of  God,  the  scorn  of  the  eucharist  and  the  cross,  the  wor- 
ship of  the  devil,  and  the  sex-crime  with  him,  the  homage 
to  him,  the  murder  and  eating  of  infants,  the  various 
kinds  of  witchcraft;  in  short,  the  entire  inventory  of 
witch-traits,  which  remained  the  standards  of  witch- 
persecutions  for  three  hundred  years. ^ 

The  old  tradition  was  that  witchcraft  was  especially 

1  Hansen,  J.:  Zauberwahn,  Inquisition  iind  Hexenprozess,  etc.,  211. 

2  Ibid.,  416. 

fl05l 


106     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

an  art  of  women.  When  the  notion  of  sex-commerce 
between  demons  and  women  was  invented  and  made 
commonplace,  the  whole  tradition  was  directed  against 
women  as  basely  seductive,  passionate,  and  licentious  by 
nature.  Then  the  Inquisition  made  processes  of  detec- 
tion and  trial  by  torture,  and  these  were  applied  against 
witches.  The  cruelest  punishment  known,  burning  alive, 
was  applied  to  them.  The  inquisitors  Institoris  and 
Sprenger  prepared  a  book,  the  Malleus  Maleficarum 
(Hammer  of  Witches).  A  Roman  Catholic  historian 
maintains  that  their  purpose  was  to  silence  the  priests 
who  denied  that  there  were  any  witches.^  The  two 
inquisitors  mentioned  had  already  been  at  work  for  five 
years  in  Constance,  and  had  caused  forty-eight  con- 
fessed witches  to  be  executed  by  the  civil  authority. ^ 
The  Malleus  "is  to  be  reckoned  amongst  the  most  mis- 
chievous productions  in  all  the  literature  of  the  world" ^; 
"it  was  the  most  portentous  monument  of  superstition 
which  the  world  has  produced."  ^  Between  1487  (the 
date  of  first  publication)  and  1669  twenty -five  editions  of 
it  were  published:  sixteen  in  Germany,  seven  in  France, 
and  two  in  Italy;  none  elsewhere.  A  forged  approval  by 
the  theological  faculty  of  Cologne  was  published  with  it. 
This  won  its  way  for  it  everywhere.^  The  writers  pro- 
fess a  venomous  and  malignant  hostility  to  women;  they 
present  women  as  extravagantly  sensual  and  libidinous, 
and  so  as  dangerous  to  men,  and  subject  to  seduction  by 
demons.^  This  is  their  major  premise,  which  they  per- 
haps exaggerated  on  account  of  the  deductions  to  be  built 
on  it.     It  is  now  not  believed  that  women  are  more 

^  Janssen,  J.:  Geschichte  des  deutschen  Volkes,  etc.,  VIII,  510,  511,  n.  2. 

^  Ibid.,  517.  3  Hansen,  J.:  Z.c,  473. 

*  Lea,  H.  C:  A  History  of  the  Inquisition  of  the  Middle  Ages,  III,  543. 

^Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  475. 

6  Malleus,  76  (ed.  1576;  Venice);  Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  482-485. 


WITCHCRAFT  107 

sensual  than  men,  but  decidedly  the  contrary.  Chrys- 
ostom  on  Matt.  19  is  quoted  in  the  Malleus  as  if  it  was 
he  who  said:  "It  is  not  expedient  to  marry,"  and  then 
a  diatribe  against  women  is  added,  which  seems,  partly 
on  account  of  the  typographical  arrangement,  to  be  also 
quoted  from  Chrysostom,  although  it  cannot  be  found 
in  his  works.  It  is  added  that  a  woman  is  superstitious 
and  credulous,  and  that  she  has  a  lubricam  linguam,  so 
that  she  must  tell  everything  to  another  woman.  That 
women  are  deceitful  is  proved  by  Delilah.  This  view  of 
women  had  been  growing  for  centuries,  especially  while 
asceticism  was  in  fashion.  The  Malleus  was  intended  to 
be  a  text-book  for  judges  of  secular  courts,  who  were 
charged  to  conduct  witch-trials. ^  In  Germany  it  met 
with  opposition,  and  the  witch-persecutors  were  forced 
to  go  back  to  Rome  for  a  ratification  of  their  authority. 
This  led  to  the  publication  of  a  bull  by  the  Pope,  Innocent 
VIII,  in  1484,2  j^  which  he  referred  to  the  great  amount 
of  sorcery  reported  from  Germany  —  which  may  show  that 
persecution  was  going  on  there  at  that  time.^  This  bull, 
with  the  Malleus,  formed  a  new  point  of  departure  in 
the  witch-delusion  in  1485,  for  in  the  bull  Innocent  gave 
the  witch-prosecutors  full  authority  in  the  premises  and 
ordered  the  Bishop  of  Strassburg  to  support  and  help 
them,  and  to  call  in  the  secular  arm,  if  necessary.  After 
that,  to  question  the  reality  of  witchcraft  was  to  question 
the  utterance  of  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  and  to  aid  anyone 
accused  was  to  impede  the  Inquisition.^ 

For  three  hundred  years,  in  all  countries  of  Christen- 
dom, the  Malleus  was  the  codex  used  by  jurists  and  eccle- 
siastics, Protestants  and  Catholics.     It  was  a  codification 

^  Hansen,  J. :  I.e.,  495. 

2  Text  in  Hoensbroech,  Graf  von:  Das  Papstthum  in  seiner  sozial-kulturellen 
Wirksamkeit,  etc.,  I,  384. 

3Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  508,  n.  *  Lea,  H.  C:  I.e.,  Ill,  540. 


108     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

of  the  whole  mass  of  fables  and  myths,  with  ridiculous 
and  obscene  attachments,  which  had  come  down  through 
the  whole  course  of  history.  It  is  amazing  that  the  male 
half  of  the  human  race  should  have  thus  calumniated  the 
female  half  of  it.  There  may  have  been  some  reaction 
against  the  equally  senseless  adoration  of  women  in 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  but  the  Malleus 
supported  its  denunciation  of  women  by  scholastic 
methods  and  theological  arguments.  "It  caused  on  this 
domain  an  immeasurable  harm  to  the  human  race.''  ^ 
All  the  material  in  the  Malleus  is  heaped  together 
without  criticism.  From  the  second  half  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  popular  tales  and  superstitions  had  been 
taken  up  by  the  Church  and  incorporated  in  Chris- 
tian theology,  and  as  a  consequence  sex-commerce  be- 
tween demons  and  women  had  been  made  a  crime.  Jurists 
were  now  charged  to  detect  and  punish  it.-  Innocent 
VIII,  in  his  bull  of  1484,  asserts  the  reality  of  such  com- 
merce in  the  most  positive  manner.  *'The  only  result 
of  the  school  theology  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  been  to 
give  to  the  popular  delusions  a  learned  drapery  and  to 
incorporate  them  in  the  Christian  world-philosophy. 
This  made  them  capable  of  dangerous  application  in  the 
administration  of  justice.  The  notion  of  sex-commerce 
between  demons  and  women  had  ceased  to  be  a  popular 
delusion.  It  was  a  part  of  learned  theology.^  "The 
reaction  on  each  other  of  theological  thinking  and  of 
omnipotence,  without  any  appeal, in  the  administration  of 
justice  led  to  the  combination  of  Church  faith  and  pop- 
ular delusion  and  produced  the  witch-mania.  Under  the 
cloak  of  religion  and  in  the  name  of  justice,  that  mania 
became  a  senseless  rage  against  supposed  witch-persons."  ^ 

1  Hansen,  J. :  I.e.,  490.  3  Ibid.,  187. 

Ubid.,  187.  4  Ibid.,  176. 


WITCHCRAFT  109 

"There  is  nothing  fouler  in  all  literature  than  the  stories 
and  illustrative  examples  by  which  these  theories  were 
supported."  ^  Many  persons  accused  of  witchcraft  were 
vicious,  immoral,  criminals,  or  justly  unpopular;  but 
inasmuch  as  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  witch,  or  witch- 
craft, they  suffered,  although  innocent  of  the  charge. 
The  total  suffering  endured  under  this  charge  it  is  impos- 
sible to  conceive. 

The  jurists  accepted  the  charge  to  detect  and  exter- 
minate witches,  and  fulfilled  it,  as  it  appears,  heartily. 
The  witch-trials  were  worse  than  the  heresy  trials  by  the 
Inquisition;  there  was  less  chance  for  the  accused. ^    The\     'L; 
system  of  trial,  preceded  by  imprisonment  and  petty  1 
torture  of  mind,  which  wore  out  the  courage  and  nerve-/ 
resistance  of  the  accused,  consisted  in  torture  which  led 
the  victim  to  assent  to  anything  in  order  to  get  a  speedy 
death.     Mediaeval  dungeons  are  now  shown  to  tourists,  | 
who  can  judge  how  long  an  old  woman  could  bear  im-  j 
prisonment  there  in  cold,   darkness,  and  dampness,  in  ] 
contact  with  rats  and  vermin.     They  "confessed"  any-   ) 
thing.     They  often  said  that  the  devil  first  appeared  to    ^ 
them  as  a  handsome  young  cavalier,  with  a  poetical  name,    \ 
who   seduced   them.     Scherr  interprets   these  instances      ) 
as  cases  in  which  shameless  mothers  sold  their  daughters 
^^to  men  for  pleasure.^     "He  who  studies  the  witch-trials      L 
r      Tbelieves  himself   transferred   into   the   midst  of   a  race      ) 
which  has  smothered  all  its  own  nobler  human  instincts — ^ 
—  reason,  justice,  shame,  benevolence,  and  sympathy  — 
in   order   to   cultivate   devilish   instincts.     Out   of   that 
domain  which  seems  to  men  the  most  precious  and  most 
elevated  in  life,  that  of  religion,  a  Medusa-head  grins  at 
the  spectator  and  arrests  his  blood  in  his  veins.     Amongst 

1  Lea,  H.  C:  I.e.,  Ill,  385.  2  Ibid.,  515. 

3  Scherr,  J. :  Deutsche  Kultur-  und  Sittengeschichte,  372. 


I 

> 


no     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Christian  people,  in  the  bosom  of  a  culture  one  thousand 
years  old,  judicial  murder  is  made  a  permanent  institution, 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  innocent  persons,  after  refined 
torture  of  the  body  and  nameless  mental  sufferings,  are 
executed  in  the  most  cruel  manner.  These  facts  are  so 
monstrous  that  all  other  aberrations  of  the  human  race 
are  small  in  comparison."  ^ 

I  It  is  a  pleasant  task  to  gather  such  cases  as  can  be  found 
of  resistance  by  ecclesiastics  to  the  prevalent  mania. 
In  1279,  at  Ruffach,  in  Alsatia,  a  Dominican  nun  was 

^accused  of  baptizing  a  wax  image,  either  to  destroy  an 
enemy  or  to  win  a  lover.  The  peasants  carried  her  to  a 
field  and  would  have  burned  her,  but  she  w^as  rescued  by 
the  friars. 2  The  Bishop  of  Brixen,  in  the  Tyrol,  in  1485, 
met  the  inquisitor  Institoris,  when  he  came  to  begin  the 
persecution,  and  forced  him  to  leave  the  country.^  At 
Arras  and  Amiens,  in  1460,  the  ecclesiastics  suppressed  a 
witch-persecution  at  its  beginning.^  At  Innsbriick  the 
bishop's  representative  arrested  the  work  of  Institoris  as 
not  conformable  to  the  rules  of  legal  practice;  the  ques- 
tions about  sex-practice  were  suppressed  as  irrelevant, 
and  a  protest  was  made  against  the  superficial  proceed- 
ings of  the  inquisitor.^  The  state  of  Venice  resisted  witch- 
persecutions  more  successfully  than  it  resisted  heresy, 
although  it  never  satisfied  the  Church  authorities;  the 
self -centered  and  suspicious  republic  had  mores  of  its  own 
which  withstood  outside  interference.  In  1518  ^he  Senate 
was  officially  informed  that  the  inquisitor  had  burned 
seventy  witches  in  Valcamonica;  that  he  had  as  many 
more  in  prison,  and  that  those  suspected  or  accused 
numbered  five  thousand,  or  one-fourth  of  the  population 

^  Hoensbroech,  I.e.,  I,  382,  citing  from  Riezler,  Hexenproz.  in  Baiem,  1. 

2  Lea,  H.  C:  Z.c,  III,  434.  ^  Hoensbroech:  I.e.,  I,  516. 

«Lea,  H.  C:  Z.c,  III,  533. 

'  Flade,  P.:  Das  romische  Inquisitionsverfahren  in  Deutschland,  etc.,  102. 


\^^ 


r 


WITCHCRAFT  111 

of  the  valleys.  The  Signoria  stopped  all  proceedings,  but 
Leo  X  ordered  the  inquisitor  to  use  excommunication 
and  interdict  if  he  was  interfered  with.^ 

If  it  be  asked  what  can  explain  the  phenomena  of  aber- 
ration both  of  thought  and  feeling  which  underlay  the 
witch-mania,  perhaps  the  suggestion  of  Scherr  ^  is  the 
best  explanation.    The  German  ecclesiastics  were  won  by 
the  increase  of  power  which  the  delusion  offered  to  the 
hierarchy.     The  civil  authorities  were  won  by  the  chance )       U 
of  pecuniary  gain,  for  the  fortunes  of  witches  were  con-       ^ 
fiscated.     Two-thirds  were  given  to  the  territorial  sover- 
eign, while  the  other  third  was  divided  between  judges, 
magistrates,  minor  ecclesiastics,  spies,  delators,  and  execu- 
tioners, by  a  ratio  adjusted  to  their  rank.     During  the 
Thirty  Years'  War,   when  everybody  else  in  Germany  |  (^^ 
underwent     impoverishment,     witch-judges     grew    rich.  I 
Therefore  half  the  witch-murders  may  well  be  accredited  ) 
to  greed  for  money,  while  the  other  half  must  be  charged! 
to  fanaticism  and  credulous  simplicity.^  i 

"Epidemic  witch-persecution  never  appeared  except  in 
the  dominions  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  It  never  broke 
out  in  the  lands  of  the  Greek  Church,  although  in  them 
also  the  ancient  notions  about  magic  were  widely  held, 
and  the  environment  contained  the  same  circumstances 
and  forces."  "In  Servia  and  Bulgaria  there  is  not  even 
any  legend  of  witch-burning,  which  is  a  proof  that  the 
Turks  did  not  allow  any  such  usage  to  come  into  existence."* 
Nevertheless,  the  Balkan  peoples  had  inherited  the  whole 
tradition  of  antiquity  and  barbarism  quite  as  directly  as 
the  peoples  of  the  Romish  Church. 

The  Protestant  reformers  broke  with  the  Church  on 

iLea,  H.  C:  Lc,  III,  546.  ^  Lx.,  374. 

3  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  539,  633. 

*  Krauss,  F.  S.:  Volksglaube  und  religioser  Brauch  der  Siidslaven,  123. 


« 


112     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

one  or  another  point  of  dogma  and  morals,  but  they 
accepted  all  the  traditions  which  did  not  involve  the 
dogmas  which  seemed  to  them  false.  They  laid  great 
stress  on  the  authority  of  Scripture,  and  therefore  thought 
the  existence  of  demons  and  witches  quite  beyond  ques- 
tion. They  accepted  and  used  the  Malleus  as  the  codex 
of  witchcraft,  and  they  outstripped  the  Inquisition  in 
cruelty  and  wrong-headedness.  The  witchcraft  notion 
had  now  been  formulated  and  given  back  to  the  popular 
classes  with  ecclesiastical  sanction,  and  for  two  centuries 
it  was  a  part  of  the  mores  of  Christendom  in  which  all 
churches  and  sects  agreed.  In  fact  it  was  after  the 
reformation-schism  took  place  that  witch-persecutions 
became  a  great  mania  throughout  Christendom,  and 
especially  in  Germany. ^  Under  Calvin,  at  Geneva,  in 
1542,  many  witches  were  executed. ^  In  jtaly  witchcraft 
was  confined,  for  the  most  part,  to  mountain  regions. 
In  other  provinces  it  was  confounded  with  crimes  of 
poisoning,  abortion,  or  the  fomentation  of  conspiracies 
in  private  families.^  Luther  was  distinguished  for  his 
faith  in  the  devil;  Satan  was  to  him  quite  as  real  as  God, 
and  far  more  familiar;  he  saw  satanic  agency  in  whatever 
annoyed  him.^  Sin  and  Satan  were  conjoined;  the  one 
presupposed  the  other.  Luther  explained  a  cretin  as  the 
offspring  of  a  demon  and  a  woman,  and  on  his  own 
responsibility^  ordered  that  it  be  drowned. 

Early  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  secular  authori- 
ties of  Protestant  and  Catholic  countries  employed  the 
utmost  "severity  ^  the  extirpation  of  witches,  of  whose 
existence  and  horrible  activity  everybody  was  convinced. 
The  cumulative  notion  of  witches  was  no  longer  a  spe- 

1  Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  369,  372.  2  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  546. 

3  Symonds,  J.  A.:  The  Catholic  Reaction,  1,  455. 

^  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Ration- 
alism in  Europe,  I,  82.  6  Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  375. 


WITCHCRAFT  113 

cial  possession  of  inquisitors,  but  it  had  penetrated  all 
cultivated  and  uncultivated  classes,  and  was  embodied 
in  a  great  literature.  The  fine  arts,  in  their  most  pop- 
ular forms,  combined  with  printing,  seized  on  the  fan- 
tastic notions  of  witchcraft  which  the  witches'  flight 
and  witches'  sabbath  offered.  These  were  represented 
in  copper  and  wood  engravings.^  About  1490  or  1500 
Molitoris  published  a  Dialogus  de  pythonicis  mulieribus, 
the  conclusions  of  which  are  thus  summed  up:  (1)  Satan 
cannot  of  his  own  power  do  evil  deeds,  but  God  some- 
times lets  him  do  them,  to  a  limited  extent;  (2)  he 
cannot  exceed  the  limit;  (3)  by  permission  of  God  he 
presents  illusions  of  men  transformed  into  beasts;  (4) 
witch-flights  and  sabbath  are  illusions;  (5)  incubes  and 
succubes  cannot  procreate;  (6)  the  devil  can  only  con- 
jecture and  use  his  knowledge  of  stars;  (7)  nevertheless, 
witches  by  worshiping  Satan  are  real  heretics  and  apos- 
tates; (8)  therefore  they  ought  to  be  burned. 

One  of  the  earliest  literary  expressions  of  opposition 
to  the  witch-doctrine  was  by  Jehan  de  Meung  in  the 
Romaunt  de  la  Rose.^  De  Meung  has  been  called  the 
Rabelais  and  the  Voltaire  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
He  was  a  critic  and  skeptic  and  ridiculed  the  notions 
in  the  current  demonism,  the  witch-flights  and  "straying 
with  Dame  Habundia,"  ^  as  well  as  the  devils  with  claws 
and  tails.  He  says  that  some  attribute  nature's  war, 
storms,  etc.,  to  demons,  but  "such  tales  are  not  worth 
two  sticks,  being  but  vain  imagining."  He  refers  the 
notions  of  the  devil's  action  on  men  to  sleep-walking  and 
dreams.  He  believed  in  astrology  and  hallucinations, 
which  he  thought  explained  the  alleged  witch-phenomena. 
But  he  distrusted  and  hated  women  as  much  as  Institoris 

1  Hansen,  J.:  Z.c,  520.  2  pt.  n. 

3  Verses,  18,565;   19,  110;   19,  302. 


114     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

or  Sprenger.  In  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
some   theologians   expressed    doubt    about    witches   and 

I      witchcraft  ^:  in  1505  Samuel  de  Cassinis,  a  Minorite,  pub- 

\  lished  a  tract  against  witch-flights  as  untrue,  although  he 
said  that  evil  by  sorcery  and  witch-adulteries  with  demons 
were  true;  this  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  systematic 

)  attempt  to  oppose  the  witch-mania.^  Janssen  is  able  to 
affirm  that  the  writers  for  and  against  witchcraft  and 

'  witches  are  equal  in  all  sects  and  professions. ^  Bodin,  one 
of  the  leaders  of  the  sixteenth  century,  especially  in  polit- 
ical philosophy,  political  economy,  and  the  doctrine  of 
money,^  wrote  a  book  ^  in  which  he  described  witch-doings 
as  if  upon  his  own  knowledge  of  facts,  when  he  was, 
like  the  popes,  only  rehearsing  the  popular  stories.  He 
believed  that  the  early  death  of  Charles  IX  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  he  spared  the  life  of  a  sorcerer  on  condition 
that  he  would  inform  on  his  colleagues.  Kepler,  the 
astronomer,  believed  in  witches  and  had  great  difficulty 
in  saving  his  mother,  who  was  a  shrew,  ^  from  execution 
as  one.  Opposition  to  the  mania  was  dangerous,  for  it 
was  a  proof  that  the  objector  was  a  sorcerer.  At  Treves, 
in  1592,  several  Jesuits,  a  Carthusian,  a  Carmelite,  and 
some  magistrates  were  accused;  one  magistrate,  who  had 
himself  condemned  many,  was  accused  and  executed, 
and  another  died  under  the  seventh  torture.^  Laymann, 
Tanner,  and  Von  Spec  are  three  Jesuits  who,  in  the  first 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  resisted  the  delusion, 
although  in  vain.^     Von  Spec  wrote  his  Cautio  Criminalis 

1  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  103.  2  Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  510. 

3  i.e.,  VIII,  585.     See  a  list  of  them,  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I, 
105,  and  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  551. 

4  Baudrillart,  H.  :  J.  Bodin  et  son  Temps,  167,  183,  494;  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.: 
Rationalism,  I,  88,  107. 

^  De  Magorum  Daimonomania.  ^  Ihid.,  637-639. 

« Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  667.  ^  Ibid.,  654. 


WITCHCRAFT  115 

because  he  was  especially  outraged  by  the  fact  that  the 
judges  dared  not  acquit  and  free  anyone  whom  they  had 
tortured,  because  to  do  so  would  publish  the  fact  that 
they  had  acted  hastily  and  erroneously.  In  spite  of  the 
frightful  treatment  to  which  they  were  subjected,  some 
women  held  out  through  the  torture  and  were  entitled  to 
acquittal;  in  the  logic  of  the  times  this  proved  that  the 
devil  helped  them.^  Von  Spec  was  born  in  1591,  wrote 
his  book  in  1627,  when  he  was  a  professor  at  Wiirzburg, 
and  published  it  anonymously.  He  had  been  confessor 
to  condemned  witches,  and  was  led  to  remonstrate 
against  the  irrationality  of  the  proceedings.  "Treat  the 
heads  of  the  Church,"  said  he,  "treat  the  judges,  or  treat 
me,  as  you  treat  these  unhappy  persons  —  subject  us  to 
the  same  tortures,  and  you  will  find  wizards  in  us  all."  ^ 
Montaigne  had  more  success:  in  1588  he  led  the  reaction 
in  France,  treating  the  delusion  with  scorn.  Hobbes,  in 
England,  followed  him,  but  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  a  distin- 
guished judge,  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  a  prominent 
physician,  held  the  proofs  of  the  reality  of  witchcraft 
to  be  indisputable.^  The  former  wrote  a  book  to  defend 
the  doctrine  of  witches.''  The  whole  Puritan  party  was 
carried  into  great  excess  in  this  matter,  apparently  by 
their  fanatical  doctrine  of  the  Scriptures.  Witch  per- 
secution reached  the  highest  point  of  cruelty  and  in- 
humanity in  Scotland,  as  it  seems,  and  the  invention  of 
instruments  of  torture  seems  there  to  have  reached  its 

*  Hoensbroech :  I.e.,  I,  551. 

2  Ebner,  T.:  Friedrich  von  Spee  und  die  Hexenprocesse  seiner  Zeit;  Hansen, 
J.:  I.e.,  445. 

3  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  128. 

*  Witchcraft.  A  Collection  of  Modem  Relations  of  Matter  of  Fact  Cou- 
ceming  Witches  and  Witchcraft  Upon  the  Persons  of  People.  To  which  is 
prefixed  a  Meditation  Concerning  the  Mercy  of  God  in  Preserving  Us  from 
the  Malice  and  Power  of  Evil  Angels.  Written  in  1661.  12mo,  pp.  64. 
It  is  very  rare  and  is  insignificant. 


116     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

highest  point.  An  iron  frame  was  locked  on  the  head  of 
a  witch,  upon  which  there  were  four  large  prongs,  which 
were  put  in  her  mouth.  The  frame  was  fastened  to  the 
wall  of  the  dungeon  so  that  she  could  neither  sit  nor 
stand  nor  lie.  A  man  on  each  side  of  her  prevented  her 
from  sleeping  for  four  or  five  nights  in  succession.  In 
1596  Alison  Balfour  withdrew  a  confession  which  she  had 
made,  explaining  it  by  saying  that  when  she  made  it  she 
had  been  tortured  several  times  in  the  caspieclaws  (iron 
frame  for  the  legs  heated  from  time  to  time  over  a  brazier), 
from  which  she  had  been  taken  several  times  dead  and 
"without  remembrance  of  good  or  evil."  Her  husband 
had  been  in  the  stocks  and  her  son  tortured  in  the  boots, 
and  her  daughter  in  the  thumb-screws,  so  that  they  had 
all  been  so  tormented  that,  partly  to  escape  greater  tor- 
ture, and  upon  promise  of  her  life,  she  had  made  con- 
fession "falsely  against  her  soul  and  conscience,  and  not 
otherwise."  ^  Stoll  ^  quotes  part  of  a  poem  by  Nicolas 
Remy,  a  witch-judge,  in  which  he  described  a  woman 
under  trial  who  saw  devils  in  the  room.  The  last  execu- 
tion for  witchcraft  in  Scotland  occurred  in  1722,  at 
Dornoch;  this  witch  had  ridden  on  her  own  daughter, 
transformed  into  a  pony  and  shod  by  the  devil,  which 
made  the  girl  lame  in  hands  and  feet.^ 

The  witch-persecutions  were  at  their  height  in  Germany 
about  1600.  They  were  popular;  the  crowd  enjoyeH'the 
executions,  and  they  clung  to  the  notion  of  witchcraft 
to  account  especially  for  calamities  which  affected  only 
a  few.  Hailstorms  and  whirlwinds,  which  are  of  great 
evil  effect  on  a  narrow  area,  were  attributed  to  witches. 
Barrenness  of  beasts  and  women  was  attributed  to  witches. 

^  Sharpe,  C.  K.:  A  Historical  Account  of  the  Belief  in  Witchcraft  in  Scot- 
land, 86. 

2  Suggestion  und  Hypnotismus  in  der  Volkerpsychologie,  429. 

3  Sharpe,  C.  K.:  I.e.,  199. 


WITCHCRAFT  117 

If  a  man  got  a  good  crop  by  careful  farming,  he  was 
accused  of  transferring  his  neighbor's  crops  to  his  own 
ground.  Passionate  love  and  hate  were  thought  to  be 
due  to  witchcraft, — in  fact,  the  whole  life-philosophy  as 
to  the  aleatory  element  was  built  upon  this  belief.  The 
crowd  treated  the  executions  as  a  spectacle  and  hooted 
at  the  victims.^  Old  women,  witches,  accused  young 
women  whom  they  named  of  bearing  infants  from  their 
necks  of  the  size  of  a  finger. ^  In  1816  witches  confessed, 
under  torture,  that  they  had,  by  witchcraft,  introduced 
fifty-seven  bushels  of  fleas  into  Vienna.^  That  such  asser- 
tions obtained  a  hearing  and  belief  shows  that  "the 
minds  of  men  were  imbued  with  an  order  of  ideas  which 
had  no  connection  with  experience."^  It  also  shows  that 
pure  skepticism,  instead  of  being  wrong,  is  a  necessary 
protection  against  folly.  Sidonie  von  Bork  was  a  beau- 
tiful girl  whom  the  Duke  of  Stettin  wanted  to  marry, 
though  she  was  of  lower  rank  than  he.  His  family 
objected  to  the  match  and  she  v/as  put  in  a  convent.  In 
1618,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  she  was  burned  as  a  witch, 
women  having  named  her,  under  torture,  as  one  of  their 
companions  at  a  witches'  sabbath.  At  Wolfenbiittel,  in 
1591,  a  woman  one  hundred  and  six  years  old  was  burned 
after  being  dragged  over  the  ground  for  a  time.^  The 
trials  and  torture  were  attended  by  degrading  and  insult- 
ing treatment  of  the  accused.^  The  devil  was  supposed  to 
help  his  own;  therefore,  if  an  accused  woman  endured  the 
torture,  it  was  not  inferred  that  she  was  innocent,  but 
that  the  devil  was  helping  her,  and  new  and  more  hideous 
torture  was  necessary  to  solve  the  doubt.  Shearing  was 
introduced    by  the   inquisitors,  about    1460,  in   France 

1  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  532.  ^  /j^^?.^  q^O. 

2  Ibid.,  687.  *  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  102. 
6  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  677. 

^Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  463;  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  517. 


118     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  Italy. ^  The  German  writers  say  that  it  was  too 
hostile  to  German  mores  to  be  allowed  in  Germany.  In 
1679,  in  the  Tyrol,  a  woman  was  tortured  until  she 
accused  her  own  children  of  witchcraft.  After  her  execu- 
tion her  son,  fourteen  years  old,  and  her  daughter,  twelve 
years  old,  were  beheaded  and  their  bodies  were  burned, 
while  another  son,  nine  years  old,  and  a  daughter,  six 
years  old,  w^ere  flogged  and  forced  to  witness  the  execu- 

,  tion  of  their  older  brother  and  sister.^ 

f       Scherr^  says  that  it  is  not  an  exaggerated  estimate, 

Lbut  a  very  moderate  one,  that  the  witch-persecutions  cost 
one  hundred_^th^Qusand  lives  m  Gergiany^  Remigius, 
a  witch- judge,  boasteoThat,  between  1580  and  1595,  in 
Lothringia,  he  had  executed  eight  hundred  witches.'* 
"Paramo  boasts  that,  in  a  century  and  a  half  from  the 
commencement  of  the  sect  in  1404,  the  Holy  Office  had 
burned  at  least  thirty  thousand  witches  who,  if  they 
had  been  left  unpunished,  would  easily  have  brought  the 
whole  world  to  destruction";  Lea  inquires,  most  reason- 
ably, "Could  any  Manichean  offer  more  practical  evi- 
dence that  Satan  was  lord  of  the  visible  universe?"^ 
This  figure  is  far  more  trustworthy  than  those  which  are 
in  the  books  about  the  number  of  persons  executed  for 
heresy.^  The  witch-persecutions  covered  two  centuries, 
from  1450  to  1650,  so  the  above  estimate  would  mean 
that,  on  an  average,  five  hundred  were  executed  in  a 
year.  The  executions  often  included  a  great  number  at 
once  —  such  was  especially  the  case  during  the  century 
of  greatest  activity,  from  1580  on.^  The  last  mass  burn- 
ing in  Germany  was  in  1678,  when  ninety -seven  persons 

*  Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  463.  ^  Hoensbroech:  I.e.,  I,  515. 
^  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Frauenwelt,  II,  167. 

*  Scherr,  J. :  Deutsche  Kultur-  und  Sittengeschichte,  379. 

»  Lea,  H.  C:  I.e.,  Ill,  549.  •  Flade,  P.:  I.e.  90. 

'Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  381. 


WITCHCRAFT  119 

were  burned  together.^  There  were  notorious  cases  in 
which  witches  under  torture  had  confessed  things  which 
the  whole  neighborhood  knew  to  be  false.  For  instance, 
a  woman  confessed  that  she  had  put  her  husband  to  death  \ 
by  witchcraft,  when  it  was  a  matter  of  public  notoriety  / 
that  he  was  run  over  by  a  heavily  laden  wagon .^  It  must 
be  supposed  that  such  cases  gradually  affected  popu- 
lar faith  about  witch- doctrines,  although  that  faith  was 
never  directly  affected  by  anything.  The  belief  in  witches 
was  due  to  hysteria  and  suggestion.  The  books,  dramas 
and  preaching  of  the  later  Middle  Ages  and  the  sixteenth 
century  were  full  of  it,  and  they  fed  the  daimonistic 
notions  which  are  at  the  basis  of  all  popular  religion.^ 
Witchcraft  became  the  popular  philosophy  for  the  whole 
aleatory  element  in  life.  This  put  it  into  the  heads  of  a 
class  of  people  to  be  witches  if  they  could  '';  hysterical 
women,  for  instance,  courted  the  notoriety  and  power 
and  loved  the  consciousness  of  causing  fear,  in  spite  of 
the  risk.  Many  perfectly  sound-minded  and  innocent 
women  could  not  be  sure  that  they  were  not  witches. 
They  had  had  dreams  suggested  by  the  popular  notions, 
or  had  suffered  from  nervous  affections  which  fell  in  with 
the  popular  superstitions.  The  whole  subject  and  the 
mode  of  treatment  of  witchcraft  is  thoroughly  popular, 
and  the  suggestion  in  it  is  clear.  Western  Europe  was 
overrun  by  persons  who  offered  cures  for  all  the  ills  of 
life,  and  the  cures  were  always  magical  or  partly  magi- 
cal. No  one  would  have  believed  in  any  other.  People 
of  both  sexes  of  the  criminal,  vicious,  and  vagabond 
classes  enacted,  sometimes  in  costume,  what  they  had 
heard   about  witch-orgies.^    Many  herbs  were  in  com- 

1  Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  382.  *  Ibid.,  529. 

2Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  633.  Ubid.,  533. 

3  Ibid.,  531. 


120     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

mon  use  to  produce  sleep,  or  visions,  or  nerve  excite- 
ment, or  abortion,  or  to  cure  sterility  and  impotence. 
The  notion  that  any  desired  result  could  be  reached  by 
swallowing  something,  especially  if  it  was  nasty,  had 
scarcely  any  limits.  Somnambulists  were  often  supposed 
to  be  caught  on  their  way  to  the  w^itches'  sabbath.  Fried- 
mann  testifies,  from  his  own  experience  as  a  physician, 
that  hallucinations  by  night,  but  waking,  occur  in  the 
case  of  elderly  persons,  especially  females;  they  are 
nervous  excitements  due  to  shght  decrease  of  mental 
power,  such  as  a  layman  w^ould  hardly  notice,  and  gro- 
tesque figures  or  black  men  are  the  most  common  forms 
of  these  frightful  illusions.^  "Witchcraft  depended  on 
general  causes  and  represented  the  prevailing  modes  of 
religious  thought."  ^  "W^itch-persecution  is  a  problem 
in  the  history  of  civilization  w^hich,  although  it  may  now 
be  regarded  as  settled,  yet  has  closer  connection  w^ith  our 
time  than  one  might  think  upon  only  superficial  con- 
sideration. The  elementary  notions  on  which  the  delu- 
sion was  based  are  even  yet  continued  in  the  doctrines  of 
almost  all  the  accepted  religious  systems."  ^  W^itchcraft 
issued  out  of  the  most  ancient  and  fundamental  popular 
faiths,  and  it  seized  on  all  which  the  religion  offered  and 
appropriated  it.  Then  it  produced  such  imitations  as 
the  perverted  mass  idea,  and  the  notion  that  Satan  begot 
Merlin,  the  magician  in  the  Arthur  legend,  with  a  virgin 
woman.'*  The  interlacing  of  witchcraft  with  popular 
world-philosophy  and  life-policy  is  evident  at  every  step, 
and  the  contributions  of  suggestion  are  easily  seen.  Its 
combination  with  criminal  purposes  and  acts  must  never 
be  overlooked,  for  private  malice  and  enmity,  the  desire 
to    extort   money,    and    various    political    and    personal 

^  Ueber  Wahnideen  im  Volkerleben,  249.  '  Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  vii. 

2  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  123.  *  Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  359. 


WITCHCRAFT  121 

projects  made  use  of  the  witch-delusion.  One  of  the  most 
striking  cases  is  that  of  Erich  II  of  Braunschweig-Kalen- 
berg,  who,  being  heavily  indebted,  turned  Catholic,  in 
1572,  in  order  to  enter  the  Spanish  service.  He  accused 
his  wife  and  four  of  her  ladies  of  bewitching  him  to  punish 
him  for  his  apostasy;  his  wife  ran  away  to  her  family 
home,  but  the  ladies  were  repeatedly  tortured  to  the 
extremest  limit.  As  they  knew  nothing  and  could  say 
nothing,  they  were  held  to  have  proved  their  innocence.^ 

No  argument  ever  made  any  way  against  this  delusion.  '1 
Lecky  2  thinks  that  "its  decline  presented  a  spectacle, 
not  of  argument  or  conflict,  but  of  silent  evanescence  and 
decay."  The  credit  of  putting  an  end  to  it  belonged  to  a 
series  of  great  skeptics  and  free  thinkers  from  Montaigne 
to  Voltaire,  who  killed  it  with  scorn  and  contempt.  In 
England  this  view  of  it  got  strong  help  from  the  skeptical 
reaction  against  Puritanism,  after  the  restoration  of  the 
Stuarts.  The  great  men  led  the  intelligent  classes  to  this 
view,  and  they  led  the  masses  to  understand  that  that  was 
the  proper  view,  just  as  now  all  intelligent  people  treat 
spiritualism.  The  Evangelical  and  Puritan  parties  kept 
up  the  faith  in  witchcraft:  Richard  Baxter  wrote  against 
witchcraft,  but  John  Wesley  reaffirmed  the  faith  in  it  ^ ; 
King  James  I  presided  at  the  torture  of  Doctor  Fian 
(John  Cunningham)  for  causing  a  storm  which  hindered 
the  king  from  returning  from  Denmark.  The  victim 
never  confessed,  but  was  burned.  Agnes  Sampson  is 
otherwise  said  to  have  done  the  harm;  she,  it  appears, 
went  to  sea  in  a  sieve. ^  In  1720  F.  Hutchinson's  Witch- 
craft was  published,  in  which  the  author  tries  to  explain 
the  texts  of  the  Bible  about  witches,  and  interprets  the 
witches  as  impostors;    he  tells  a  story  of  an  Anglican 

*  Janssen,  J.:  I.e.,  VIII,  646.  ^  m^^^  140. 

2  Rationalism,  I,  115.  ^  Ibid.,  123;  Sharpe,  C.  K.:  I.e.,  64. 


122     ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

clergyman,  eighty  years  old,  who  was  executed  for  witch- 
craft. 

In  the  reign  of  Queen  xAnne  the  rural  population  still 
believed  in  witchcraft.  Addison  tells  how  he  and  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley  visited  Moll  ^Aliite  and  found  a 
broomstick  and  a  cat.  Sir  Roger  said  that  Moll  had 
often  been  brought  before  him  for  making  children  spit 
pins  and  giving  maids  the  nightmare,  and  "that  the  coun- 
try people  would  be  tossing  her  into  a  pond  and  trying 
experiments  with  her  every  day  if  it  was  not  for  him 
and  his  chaplain."  Several  witches  were  executed  during 
the  reign  of  Anne,  but  capital  punishment  for  witchcraft 
was  abolished  in  1736.^  Gibbon  says  that  "the  French 
and  English  lawyers  of  the  present  age  allow  the  theory 
and  deny  the  practice  of  witchcraft."  ^ 

Witchcraft  was  a  recognized  crime  in  the  laws  of  the 
New  Enfrjand  colrtm'es.  There  were  several  isolated  cases 
in  Massachusetts  before  the  Salem  outbreak,  some  of 
them  very  sad  and  outrageous.^  The  persecutions  all 
had  a  popular  character  and  all  showed  the  passion  and 
cruelty  of  which  a  village  democracy  is  capable  against 
an  unpopular  person.  Cotton  Mather  stands  personally 
responsible  for  using  his  great  personal  influence,  in  con- 
nection with  the  Glover  case  (1688),  to  spread  faith  in 
witchcraft.  Increase  Mather  published,  in  1693,  An 
Account  of  the  Tryals  of  the  New  England  witches,  with 
cases  of  conscience  concerning  witchcrafts  and  Evil  Spirits 
personating  Men.  A  doctrine  which  he  formulated  and 
which  destroyed  some  excellent  people  who  were  accused 
at  Salem  was  that  Satan  could  just  as  well  appear  in  the 
person  of  a  pious  man  or  woman  as  in  that  of  a  wicked 

^  Ashton,  J. :  Social  Life  in  the  Reign  of  Queen  Anne,  93. 

2  Decline  and  Fall,  Chap.  XXV,  n.  x. 

3  Upham,  C.  W.:  Salem  Witchcraft,  I. 


WITCHCRAFT  123 

one,  to  work  his  harm;  therefore  the  character  of  the 
accused  went  for  nothing.  Cotton  Mather  was  befooled  by 
a  clever  girl,  who  played  on  his  vanity.  While  the  mania 
raged  no  one  could  oppose  it,  and  those  who  tried  to  do 
so  became  victims  of  it.  The  notion  of  sex-intercourse 
between  Satan  and  women  came  out  again  at  Salem,  and 
Glanvil  and  Sir  Matthew  Hale  were  treated  as  great 
authorities.  The  ministers  were  warned  to  be  careful, 
but  they  could  not  deny  the  reality  of  witchcraft.^  The 
New  England  case  is  especially  important  because  it 
shows  how  limited  in  space  and  time  an  outburst  of  a 
popular  mania  may  be. 

The  fundamental  notion  of  this  delusion  is  that  men, 
with  the  help  of  demons  whom  they  invoke  for  that 
purpose,  can  do  harm,  and  that  the  attempts  to  invoke 
the  demons  are  now  actually  made.  This  notion  belongs 
to-day  to  the  acknowledged  doctrine  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  has  its  place  in  all  the  authoritative  Catholic 
books  on  ethics.  Perhaps  it  has  adherents  amongst 
Protestants.^  Leo  XIII  ordered  every  priest  to  read 
aloud  a  prayer  on  the  steps  of  the  altar  after  every  mass 
in  which  occurs  the  petition:  "Holy  Archangel  Michael, 
throw  Satan  and  all  other  spirits  of  hell,  who  roam  in  the 
world  to  destroy  men,  back  into  hell."  ^ 

In  1749  Mia  Renata,  a  nun  seventy  years  old,  who  had 
entered  the  convent  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  was  beheaded 
and  her  body  was  burned  as  a  witch  at  Wiirzburg,  under 
the  authority  of  the  prince-bishop  of  that  place.  She 
was  accused  of  trying  to  seduce  the  nuns  and  bewitching 
them  with  gout  and  neuralgia,'*  and  all  the  old  witch- 

1  Hutchinson,  T.:  The  Witchcraft  Delusion  of  1692,  I,  in  New  England 
Historical  and  Genealogical  Register,  XXIV,  381. 

^Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  6;  on  page  88  authorities  are  quoted  from  the  Catholic 
writers  on  ethics. 

^  Hoensbroech:  I.e.,  I,  358.  *  Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  384  and  Appendix. 


124     ESSAYS  OF  WILLLIM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

doctrines  are  in  the  twelve  findings  of  the  court.  In  1756 
a  fourteen-year-old  girl  was  beheaded  as  a  witch  at  Lands- 
hut,  in  Bavaria,  because  she  had  made  a  wager  with  the 
devil.  In  1782,  at  Glarus,  in  Switzerland,  a  maid-servant 
was  executed  for  witchcraft;  she  had  given  pin-seed 
to  a  child,  which  germinated  in  its  stomach  so  that  it 
spat  pins.  The  last  witch  execution  in  Germany  was 
in  1775,  a  woman  charged  w^ith  carnal  intercourse  with 
Satan. ^  In  Poland  and  Hungary  witch-persecutions  con- 
tinued until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. ^  In  1672 
Colbert  directed  the  judges  in  France  to  receive  no  accusa- 
tion of  sorcery  against  anyone,^  but  in  1718  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Rouen  burned  a  man  for  that  crime. '^  In  1781 
the  Inquisition  burned  a  witch  at  Seville  for  making  a 
pact  with  Satan  and  practicing  fornication  with  him.^ 
*' Incredible  to  relate,  on  the  22d  of  April,  1751,  a  rabble 
of  about  five  thousand  persons  beset  the  workhouse  at 
Tring,  in  Hertfordshire,  where,  seizing  Luke  Osborne 
and  his  wife,  two  persons  suspected  of  witchcraft,  they 
ducked  them  in  a  pond  till  the  old  woman  died;  after 
which  her  corpse  was  put  to  bed  to  her  husband  by  the 
mob,  of  whom  only  one  person  was  hanged  for  this 
detestable  outrage."  ^  The  last  law  about  witchcraft  in 
the  British  Islands  was  an  Irish  statute,  which  was  not 
repealed  until  1821.^  In  1823  a  court  in  the  island  of 
Martinique  condemned  a  man  to  the  galleys  for  life  for 
"vehement  suspicion"  of  sorcery.^  In  1863  an  old  man 
was  put  to  death  by  a  mob,  as  a  wizard,  at  Essex,  Eng- 
land.^ In  1873  a  witch  was  burned  in  Spanish  South 
America. ^°     In    1874,   in   Mexico,   several   persons   were 

*  Hoensbroech :  I.e.,  I,  551.  ^  Sharpe,  C.  K.:  I.e.,  176. 

'Scherr,  J.:  I.e.,  387.  ^  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  70. 

'  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  117.  « Lea^  h.  C:  I.e.,  I,  561. 

*  Ibid.,  118.  9  Lecky,  W.  E.  H. :  Rationalism,  I,  139. 
» Hansen,  J.:  I.e.,  532.  lo  Umschau,  VII,  241. 


WITCHCRAFT  125 

publicly  burned  as  sorcerers.  In  1885  Christian  negroes 
in  Hayti  practiced  the  old  rites  of  sorcery,  killing  and 
eating  children.^  In  the  early  history  of  Illinois  some 
negroes  were  hanged  at  Cahokia  for  witchcraf  t.^  In  1895 
a  woman  was  tortured  to  death,  as  a  witch,  by  her  relatives 
in  Tipperary,  Ireland.^  An  Associated  Press  dispatch  of 
July  11,  1897,  described  the  act  of  two  men,  in  Mexico, 
who  dragged  a  woman  eighty  years  old  to  death,  tied  to 
jdieir  horses  by  the  feet,  for  bewitching  the  sister  of  one  of 
them.  In  Lyme,  Connecticut,  in  October,  1897,  a  band 
of  religious  fanatics  attempted  to  drive  the  devil  out 
of  a  rheumatic  old  woman  by  bruising  and  immersing 
her.^  In  a  cablegram  in  the  New  York  Times,  Decem- 
ber 14,  1900,  it  was  stated  that  an  Italian  in  London 
burned  a  pin-studded  wax  image  of  President  McKinley 
on  the  steps  of  the  American  Embassy.  In  1903  a  moun- 
taineer in  North  Carolina,  whose  wife  could  not  make 
the  butter  come,  thought  that  a  neighboring  woman  had 
bewitched  the  milk.  He  pinned  up  a  portrait  of  her  on 
the  wall  and  shot  a  silver  bullet  through  it.^ 

These  cases  show  that  belief  in  witchcraft  is  not  dead. 
It  is  latent  and  may  burst  forth  anew  at  any  moment. 
"The  difference  [from  age  to  age]  is  not  so  much  in  the 
amount  of  credulity  as  in  the  direction  it  takes."  ^  At 
the  present  day  it  is  in  politics.  Lecky  thought  that 
the  cause  of  persecution  was  the  intensity  of  dogmatic 
opinion^;  that  may  be  a  cause,  for  no  man  is  tolerant 
about  anything  about  which  he   cares   very  much  and 

1  Globus,  XLVII,  252,  264. 

2  Reynolds,  J.:  History  of  Illinois,  51;  date  of  the  execution  not  given. 
Many  modern  cases  are  collected  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  XLVII,  73. 

'  New  York  Times,  March  31  and  April  7,  1895. 

*  Ibid.,  October  26,  1897. 

^  Harper's  Magazine,  No.  637. 

« Lecky,  W.  E.  H.:  Rationalism,  I,  101.  'Rationalism,  II,  39. 


126     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

in  regard  to  which  he  thinks  that  he  has  "the  truth." 
Struggles  for  poHtical  power,  however,  cause  even  in- 
tenser  rage,  and  it  is  poHtical  faction  which,  in  the  future, 
may  return  to  violent  repression  of  dissent.  In  the  his- 
tory of  city  after  city  we  meet  with  in  tensest  rancor 
between  classes  and  factions,  and  we  find  this  rancor 
producing  extremes  of  beastly  cruelty,  when  interest 
seems  to  call  for  it.  Socialism  is,  in  its  spirit  and  pro- 
gramme, well  capable  of  producing  new  phenomena  of 
despotism  and  persecution  in  order  to  get  or  retain  social 
power.  Anarchists  who  are  fanatical  enough  to  throw 
bombs  into  theaters  or  restaurants,  or  to  murder  kings 
and  presidents  just  because  they  are  such,  are  capable 
of  anything  w^hich  witch-judges  or  inquisitors  have  done, 
if  they  should  think  that  party  success  called  for  it.  If 
bad  times  should  come  again  upon  the  civilized  world, 
through  overpopulation  and  an  unfavorable  economic 
conjuncture,  popular  education  would  decline  and  classes 
would  be  more  widely  separated.  It  must  then  be  ex- 
pected that  the  old  demonism  would  burst  forth  again 
and  would  reproduce  the  old  phenomena. 


RELIGION  AND  THE   MORES 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES 

[1910] 

MOHAMMEDANISM,  Romanism,  and  Protestant- 
ism contain  systems  of  world-philosophy  which 
have  been  deduced  from  religious  dogmas.  The  world- 
philosophy  is  in  each  case  removed  by  several  steps  of 
deduction  from  the  religious  postulates.  In  each  case 
customs  have  grown  up  from  the  unavoidable  compro- 
mise between  metaphysical  dogmas  and  life  interests,  and 
these  customs,  so  far  as  they  inhere  in  essential  traits  of 
human  nature  or  in  fundamental  conditions  of  human 
life,  or  as  far  as  they  have  taken  on  the  sanctity  of  wide 
and  ancient  authority,  so  that  they  seem  to  be  above 
discussion,  are  the  mores.  Does  a  Roman  Catholic,  or  a 
Mohammedan,  or  a  Protestant  child  begin  by  learning 
the  dogmas  of  his  religion  and  then  build  a  life-code  on 
them.?  Not  at  all.  He  begins  by  living  in  and  accord- 
ing to  the  mores  of  his  family  and  societal  environment. 
The  vast  mass  of  men  in  each  case  never  do  anything  else 
but  thus  imbibe  a  character  from  the  environment.  If 
they  learn  the  religious  dogmas  at  all,  it  is  superficially, 
negligently,  erroneously.  They  are  trained  in  the  ritual, 
habituated  to  the  usages,  imbued  with  the  notions  of  the 
societal  environment.  They  hear  and  repeat  the  proverbs, 
sayings,  and  maxims  which  are  current  in  it.  They  per- 
ceive what  is  admired,  ridiculed,  abominated,  desired  by 
the  people  about  them.  They  learn  the  code  of  conduct 
—  what  is  considered  stupid,  smart,  stylish,  clever,  or 

[129] 


130     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

foolish,  and  they  form  themselves  on  these  ideas.  They 
get  their  standards  from  the  standards  of  their  environ- 
ment. Behind  this,  but  far  behind  it  for  all  but  the 
scholars,  are  the  history  and  logic  by  which  the  mores 
are  connected  with  the  religious  facts  or  dogmas,  and 
when  the  scholars  investigate  the  history  and  logic  they 
find  that  the  supposed  history  is  a  tissue  of  myths  and 
legends  and  that  the  logic  is  like  a  thread  broken  at  a 
hundred  points,  twisted  into  myriad  windings,  and  snarled 
^  into  innumerable  knots. 

But  now  it  follows  that  the  mores  are  affected  all  the 
time  by  changes  in  environmental  conditions  and  societal 
growth  and  by  changes  in  the  arts,  and  they  follow  these 
influences  without  regard  to  religious  institutions  or  doc- 
trines; or  at  most,  compromises  are  continually  made 
between  inherited  institutions  and  notions  on  one  side 
and  interests  on  the  other.  The  religion  has  to  follow 
the  mores.  In  its  nature,  no  religion  ever  changes;  for 
every  religion  is  absolute  and  eternal  truth.  It  never 
contains  any  provision  for  its  own  amendment  or  "evolu- 
tion." It  would  stultify  itself  if  it  should  say:  I  am 
temporarily  or  contingently  true,  and  I  shall  give  way  to 
something  truer.  I  am  a  working  hypothesis  only.  I 
am  a  constitution  which  may  be  amended  whenever  you 
please.*^" The  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints"  must 
claim  to  be  perfect,  and  the  formula  itself  means  that  the 
faith  is  changeless.  A  scientific  or  developing  religion  is 
an  absurdity.  But  then  again  nothing  is  absolutely  and 
eternally  true.  Everything  must  change,  and  religion 
is  no  exception.  Therefore  every  religion  is  a  resisting 
inertia  which  is  being  overcome  by  moving  forces.  In- 
terests are  the  forces,  because  they  respond,  in  men,  to 
hunger,  love,  vanity,  and  fear,  and  the  actual  mores  of 
a  time  are  the  resultant  of  the  force  of  interests  and  the 


RELIGION  AND  THE   MORES  131 

inertia  of  religion.  The  leaders  of  a  period  enlist  on  the 
side  either  of  the  interests  or  the  resistance,  and  the  mass 
of  men  float  on  the  resultant  current  of  the  mores.  / 

Religion  is  tradition.  It  is  a  product  of  history  and 
it  is  embodied  in  ritual,  institutions,  and  officials,  which 
are  historical.  From  time  to  time  it  is  observed  that  the 
religious  generalizations  do  not  hold  true;  experience 
does  not  verify  them.  At  last  skepticism  arises  and  new 
efforts  of  philosophy  are  required  to  reestablish  the  reli- 
gious dogmas  or  to  make  new  compromises.  Philosophy 
appears  as  a  force  of  revision  and  revolution.  In  the 
New  Testament  we  see  a  new  philosophy  undermining 
and  overthrowing  rabbinical  Judaism.  This  operation 
may  be  found  in  the  history  of  any  religion;  and  it  is 
often  repeated.  The  institutional  and  traditional  religion 
stands  like  an  inherited  and  established  product;  the 
philosophy  appears  like  a  new  and  destructive  element 
which  claims  to  be  reformatory,  and  may  turn  out  to  be 
such,  but  which  begins  by  destruction. 

We  may  see  one  of  these  operations  in  the  ecclesiastical 
schism  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  mediseval  system 
broke  down  in  the  fifteenth  century;  it  was  not  able  to 
support  the  weight  thrown  on  it  by  the  great  changes 
of  that  period.  New  devices  were  charged  with  the  great 
societal  duties;  for  instance,  the  State  was  created  and 
charged  with  duties  which  the  Church  had  claimed  to 
perform.  The  State  thus  got  control  of  marriage,  divorce, 
legitimacy,  property,  education,  etc.  These  things  were 
in  the  mores,  and  the  mores  changed.  The  masses 
accepted  the  changes  and  readjusted  their  ideas  accord- 
ingly. They  turned  to  the  State  instead  of  the  Church 
for  the  defense  and  control  of  great  interests,  and  the 
schism  in  the  Church  was  a  result.  Those  who  still  kept 
faith  in  sacramental  religion  have  clung  to  institutions. 


132     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

ritual,  and  dogmas  which  are  consistent  with  sacra- 
mental religion;  those  who  rejected  sacramental  dogmas 
have  made  new  usages  and  institutions  to  fit  their  religious 
needs  and  experience.  The  latter  school  have  drawTi  new 
deductions  and  inferences  from  the  great  principles  of 
their  creed  and  faith.  The  deductions  thus  made,  when 
turned  into  injunctions  or  inhibitions,  impose  certain 
duties  which  are  imperative  and  arbitrary.  For  instance, 
we  are  told  that  we  must  do  a  thing  because  the  Bible 
says  so,  not  because  there  is  any  rational  relation  between 
that  act  and  self-realization.  Nobody  has  ever  done 
what  the  Bible  says.  What  men  have  always  done,  if 
they  tried  to  do  right,  was  to  conform  to  the  mores  of  the 
group  and  the  time.  Monastic  and  Puritan  sects  have 
tried  over  and  over  again  in  the  history  of  the  Church  to 
obey  the  Gospel  injunctions.  They  begin  by  a  protest 
against  the  worldliness  of  the  Church.  They  always  have 
to  segregate  themselves.  WTiy.'^  They  must  get  out  of 
the  current  mores  of  society  and  create  an  environment 
of  their  own  where  they  can  nurse  a  new  body  of  mores 
within  which  the  acts  they  desire  to  practice  will  be 
possible.  They  have  always  especially  desired  to  create 
a  society  with  the  mores  which  they  approved,  and  to  do 
this  they  needed  to  control  coming  generations  through 
their  children  or  successors.  No  such  effort  has  ever  suc- 
ceeded. All  the  churches  and  nearly  all  the  Christian 
denominations  have,  until  within  a  few  years,  resisted 
investigation  of  the  truth  of  history  and  nature.  They 
have  yielded  this  position  in  part  but  not  altogether; 
within  a  year  we  have  heard  of  a  movement  in  the  Church 
of  Rome  to  test  and  verify  traditions  about  history  and 
nature.  So  far  it  has  been  suppressed.  In  the  mores  of 
to-day  of  all  the  intelligent  classes  the  investigation  of 
truth  is  a  leading  feature,  and  with  justice,  since  the  wel- 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES  133 

fare  of  mankind  primarily  depends  on  correct  knowledge 
of  the  world  in  which  we  live,  and  of  human  nature.     It"^ 
is  a  very  heinous  fault  of  the  ecclesiastical  organizations     A  i/ 
that   they  resist   investigation   or   endeavor    to   control    /  ]li 
its  results,  for  it  alienates  them  from  the  mores  of  the  /    ^ 
time  and  destroys  their  usefulness.     The  mores  will  con- 
trol the  religion  as  they  have  done  hitherto,  and  as  they    / 
do  now.     They  have  forced  an  abandonment  of  ritual  (j 
and  dogma. 

However,  the  case  which  is  really  important  and  which 
always  presents  itself  in  the  second  stage  is  that  logical 
inferences  as  to  what  men  ought  to  do  are  constructed 
upon  the  world-philosophy.  In  the  New  Testament  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  were  denounced  because  they  had 
bound  heavy  burdens  and  laid  them  on  men's  shoulders. 
This  referred  to  the  rabbinical  constructive  duties  of 
ritual  and  behavior  —  an  elaborate  system  of  duties  in 
which  energy  was  expended  with  no  gain  in  self-realiza- 
tion. The  mediaeval  Church  fell  under  the  dominion  of 
the  same  tendency,  and  by  construction  and  inference 
multiplied  restrictions  and  arbitrary  duties  which  had  the 
same  effect.  We  now  hear  constructive  arguments  made 
to  prove  from  Scripture  that  there  should  be  no  divorce, 
and  that  no  man  should  be  allowed  to  marry  his  deceased 
wife's  sister,  although  there  is  no  authority  at  all  in  Scrip- 
ture for  such  prohibitions.  ^ 

It  appears  probable  that  all  religious  reformations 
have  been  due  to  changes  in  the  mores.  Moses  led  the 
Israelites  out  of  Egypt  in  order  to  get  them  out  of  the 
collision  between  their  mores  and  those  of  the  Egyptians. 
The  contrast  between  the  mores  of  the  Israelites  and 
Canaanites  is  emphasized  throughout  the  Old  Testament. 

It  is  against  the  mores  of  the  Jews  of  the  time  of  Jesus 
that  the  New  Testament  is  a  revolt;  the  denunciations 


134     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

of  woe  on  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  are  an  expression 
of  it.  Christianity  failed  among  the  Jews  because  the 
revolution  in  the  mores  which  it  called  for  was  too  great; 
it  was,  in  reality,  a  Hellenistic  world-philosophy  and  a 
treason  inside  Judaism.  Mohammed's  action  was  based 
on  innovations  in  the  mores  of  the  Arabs  which  had 
partially  prevailed,  and  which  he  adopted  and  urged  with 
supernatural  sanctions  against  the  old  mores.  It  is 
probable  that  Zoroaster  and  Buddha  made  themselves 
exponents  of  a  revolution  in  the  mores  of  their  peoples. 
Zoroaster's  work  and  the  hostility  between  the  Iranians 
and  their  kindred  of  India  has  made  the  history  of  the 
Persians  and  of  the  other  peoples  of  the  Euphrates  Valley 
and  its  neighborhood. 

These  examples  not  only  show  us  that  the  influence  of 
the  religion  on  the  mores  is  not  to  be  denied,  but  they 
show  us  what  this  influence  is  and  what  it  is  not.  Out 
of  the  experience  arises  the  world-philosophy  including 
religion.  Thus  there  is  a  constant  alternation  of  action 
or  experience  and  thought.  So  far  well,  but  then  the 
deductions  from  the  world-philosophy  begin,  and  they  are 
metaphysical.  They  turn  into  dogmas  which  are  logical 
or  speculative  or  fantastic.  There  is  not  a  sequence  of 
experience,  reflection,  action  but  the  sequence  is  experi- 
ence, reflection,  deduction  —  perhaps  repeated  logical 
deduction,  resulting  in  dogmas  as  an  arbitrary  injunc- 
tion —  and  then  new  action.  The  ecclesiastics  or  phi- 
ij  losophers  get  a  chance  to  introduce  selfish  elements  for 
their  owti  aggrandizement.  Next  these  dogmatic  products 
are  brought  back  to  the  world  of  experience  and  action 
as  imperative  rules  of  conduct.  They  may  win  outward 
respect  and  pretended  obedience,  but  they  are  evaded. 
The  moral  product  is  chicane  and  hypocrisy,  and  this  is 
what  enters  into  the  mores.     At  the  same  time,  if  the 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES  135 

religion  offers  any  bribes  or  concessions  to  human  passion 
or  weakness,  the  mores  seize  upon  these  and  swell  them 
into  the  vices  of  an  age.  If  the  Church  sets  rigid  and 
arbitrary  rules,  it  has  to  sell  dispensations;  why,  then, 
should  not  the  age  become  venal?  If  people  revel  in 
descriptions  of  torture  and  agony,  they  will  be  callous 
to  it.  If  the  religion  presents  sensual  indulgence  as  a 
reward  of  good  conduct,  then  sensuality  is  an  ideal;  it 
is  licensed,  not  restricted.  In  primitive  society  all  cus- 
toms were  sanctioned  by  ghosts.  Hence  all  customs  are 
ritual;  hence  abortion,  infanticide,  killing  the  old,  canni- 
balism, and  so  on,  were  all  ritual  acts  and  not  only  were 
they  proper,  but  within  the  prescribed  conditions  they  were 
duties.  When  Christendom  declared  sex-renunciation  to 
be  the  ideal  of  perfection  for  one-half  of  civilized  men, 
and  Mohammedanism  presented  sex-pleasure  as  the  ideal 
for  the  other,  a  striking  picture  was  presented  of  the  two 
poles  of  excess  and  ill  between  which  men  are  placed  with 
respect  to  this  great  dominant  interest  of  the  race.  All 
religions  are  creations  of  fantasy.  They  come  out  of  the 
realm  of  metaphysics.  They  come  down  into  this  world 
of  sense  with  authority.  The  moral  ideas  come  out  of 
the  mores,  which  move,  and  they  are  used  to  criticise  the 
religious  traditions,  which  remain  stereotyped.  Religions 
enjoin  acts  which  have  become  abominable  in  the  mores, 
such  as  cannibalism,  human  sacrifice,  child-sacrifice, 
prostitution,  intoxication.  They  aim  to  supersede  expe- 
rience, knowledge,  and  reason  by  labors  and  injunctions. 
Galton  says^:  "The  religious  instructor,  in  every  creed, 
is  one  who  makes  it  his  profession  to  saturate  his  pupils 
with  prejudice."  Some  obey,  but  the  great  mass  of  the 
society  do,  day  by  day,  what  will  satisfy  their  interests 
according  to  the  best  knowledge  they  have  or  can  get 

1  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty  and  its  Development,  210. 


136     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

from  the  usages  of  the  people  around  them.  These  acts 
and  the  thoughts,  codes,  and  standards  which  go  with 
them  are  the  mores.  Every  people,  therefore,  takes  out 
of  its  religion  or  out  of  the  religion  which  is  brought  to 
it  just  what  suits  its  tastes  and  its  ways. 

No  religion  of  those  which  we  call  world-religions,  and 
which  have  a  complete  system^  is  ever  put  in  practice 
as  a  whole;  the  people  always  take  out  of  it  what  suits 
their  tastes  and  ideas,  and  that  means  especially  their 
mores.  Buddhism  has  run  out  into  quite  independent 
forms  in  Ceylon,  Tibet,  and  China  and  has  died  out  in 
Hindustan.  Its  excessive  ritual,  its  contemplativeness, 
its  futile  learning,  the  phantasmagoria  of  supernatural 
beings  which  take  the  place  of  a  god,  its  spells  and  charms 
and  prayer-wheels  bear  witness  to  antecedent  traits  in  the 
people  who  adopted  it  and  which  it  has  never  overcome. 
The  mores  follow  these  traits,  not  the  religious  dogmas. 
All  the  elaborate  {i.e.,  civilized)  religions  impose  duties 
which  are  irksome,  especially  if  they  are  interferences 
with  interest  or  with  human  passions  and  appetites. 
The  duties  are  neglected,  and  then  comes  fear  of  the  anger 
of  the  deity.  At  this  point  ritual  enters  in  as  expia- 
tion, and  atonement,  especially  in  the  forms  of  self-dis- 
cipline, sacrifice,  self -mutilation,  scourging,  fines,  fasting, 
pilgrimages,  church -going,  etc.  Consequently,  when 
religion  is  ritual  and  its  methods  of  reconciling  man 
and  God  are  ritualistic,  all  the  methods  of  self-discipline 
enter  deeply  into  the  mores.  Mediaeval  Christianity  and 
Mohammedanism  illustrate  this  by  the  importance  ascribed 
to  fasting,  which,  as  it  is  employed,  is  an  active  agent. 
The  English  ritualists  of  the  last  sixty  years  have  intro- 
duced ritual  as  an  engine  to  teach  the  old  doctrine  of 
religion  and  to  bring  the  interest  of  men  back  to  the 
mediaeval  views  that  the  greatest  interest  of  man  is  the 


RELIGION  AND  THE   MORES  137 

apparatus  and  operation  (sacraments)  by  which  his  fate 
in  the  other  world  may  be  decided.  Zoroastrianism  may 
very  probably  be  due,  in  the  main,  to  one  man,  for  it 
seems  to  be  an  invented  system,  but  it  came  out  of  a  body 
of  magi  who  had  long  existed  and  it  contains  a  system 
made  by  them  and  for  them.  The  old  demonism  of 
Babylonia  overpowered  it.  For  the  practical  life  of  per- 
sons who  were  not  magi  it  was  realistic  and  matter  of 
fact.  It  inculcated  industry  and  thrift  and  its  ideals  of 
virtue  were  industrial,  consisting  in  good  work,  in  sub- 
duing the  earth  and  making  it  productive;  so  it  fell  in 
with  the  mores  of  the  people  of  the  Euphrates  Valley 
and  strengthened  them.  Mohammedanism  has  been  a 
conquering  religion;  it  has  been  imposed  on  some  people 
who  were  heathen.  For  them  it  has  great  influence 
because  its  creed  is  simple  and  its  ritual  is  simple,  but  at 
the  same  time  strict  and  incessant.  It  has  split  into 
great  sects  on  account  of  the  transformations  imposed 
on  it  by  more  civilized  people  who  have  adopted  it. 
Its  fatalism,  lack  of  civil  ideas,  spirit  of  plunder  and 
conquest,  fanaticism,  and  scientific  ignorance  have 
entered  into  the  mores  of  all  the  people  over  whom  it 
has  gained  domination.  Hence  the  mores  of  Moham- 
medan nations  present  a  great  variety,  and  often  very 
grotesque  combinations.  Christianity  has  taken  very 
different  forms  among  Greeks,  Slavs,  Latins,  and  Teu- 
tons. It  inculcates  meekness,  but  few  Christians  have 
ever  been  meek.  It  has  absorbed  all  kinds  of  elements 
where  it  has  met  with  native  and  national  habitudes 
which  it  could  not  displace;  that  is  as  much  as  to  say 
that  it  has  had  to  yield  to  the  mores.  We  hear  a  great 
deal  about  its  victories  over  heathenism.  They  were  all 
compromises,  and  when  we  get  to  know  the  old  heathen- 
ism we  find  it  again  in  what  we  thought  were  the  most 


138     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

distinctive  features  of  Christianity.  The  reHgion  of 
Odin  was  a  reHgion  of  warriors  and  for  warriors.  It  took 
its  tone  from  them  and  gave  back  the  warrior  spirit  with 
a  new  sanction  and  an  intensified  ideal  in  this  world  and 
the  other.  Ferocity,  bloodshed,  and  indifference  to  death 
were  antecedents  and  consequents  of  the  religion. 

Sects  of  religion  form  upon  a  single  idea  or  doctrine, 
which  they  always  exaggerate.  Then  the  dogma  gets 
power  over  the  whole  life.  This  is  the  case  in  which  the 
religion  rises  superior  to  the  mores  and  molds  them,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Quakers.  Some  sects  of  India  (the 
Jains)  have  put  the  prohibition  against  killing  anything 
whatsoever  which  has  life  before  everything  else,  and  have 
drawn  the  extremest  inferences  from  it  as  to  what  one 
ought  to  do  and  not  do  lest  he  kill  anything.  Their  whole 
mode  of  life  and  code  of  duty  is  a  consequence. 

Within  fifty  years  in  the  United  States  the  mores  have 
very  powerfully  influenced  religion,  and  the  effect  is  open 
to  our  view.  The  dogmatic  side  of  religion  has  been 
laid  aside  by  all  the  Protestant  denominations.  Many 
instances  may  be  shown  in  which  the  mores  have  modi- 
fied the  religion.  The  attitude  toward  religion  is  in  the 
mores;  in  recent  mores  open  attacks  on  religion  are 
frowned  upon  as  bad  manners  and  religion  is  treated 
with  respect.  The  deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  was 
an  attack  on  religion,  but  the  agnosticism  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  although  irreligious,  sought  no  war  with 
religion.  At  the  same  time  the  interest  in  religion  has 
very  greatly  diminished,  and  it  is  a  symptom  of  indiffer- 
ence when  men  do  not  care  to  carry  on  controversies 
about  it.  The  clergy  has  ceased  to  preach  "theology." 
They  and  their  congregations  care  for  theology  no  longer; 
they  look  upon  "morality"  as  the  business  of  the  clergy 
and  the  pulpit.     The  pulpit,  as  an  institution,  no  longer 


RELIGION  AND  THE   MORES  139 

speaks  with  authority;  it  tries  to  persuade,  and  to  do 
this  it  has  to  aim  at  popularity.  It  wants  to  attract 
attention  hke  newspapers,  books,  the  theater,  the  lecture- 
platform,  and  it  has  to  have  recourse,  like  them,  to  sen- 
sational methods.  If  it  cannot  command  authority,  it 
must  try  to  recommend  itself  by  the  power  of  reason. 
The  current  fashion  is  social  endeavor,  especially  under 
the  forms  of  charity ;  thus  are  set  the  lines  along  which  the 
churches  and  denominations  vie  with  each  other  for  the 
approval  of  the  public.  A  church,  therefore,  turns  into 
a  congeries  of  institutions  for  various  forms  of  social 
amelioration,  and  the  pulpit  exercises  consist  in  discus- 
sions of  public  topics,  especially  social  topics,  "from  an 
ethical  standpoint";  that  is,  by  the  application  of  the 
ethical,  or  quasi-ethical,  notions  which  are  at  present 
current  in  our  mores.  What  is  that  but  a  remodeling 
of  the  ecclesiastical  institutions  which  we  have  inherited, 
according  to  the  notions,  standards,  and  faiths  which 
are  in  the  mores  of  our  time.^  Religion,  properly  speak- 
ing, simply  falls  away.  It  is  not  as  strong  a  motive  as 
humanitarianism,  and  it  is  in  nowise  necessary  to  the  work 
of  social  amelioration;  often  it  is  a  hindrance,  as  when 
it  diverts  energy  and  capital  from  social  work  to  ecclesi- 
astical expenditures.  When  theologians  declare  that  they 
accept  the  evolution  philosophy  because,  however  the 
world  came  to  be,  God  was  behind  it,  this  is  a  fatal 
concession  for  religion  or  theolbgy.  When  religion 
withdraws  into  this  position,  it  has  abandoned  the  whole 
field  of  human  interest.  It  may  be  safe  from  attack, 
but  it  is  also  powerless  and  a  matter  of  indifference. 
Theologians  also  say  now  that  the  miracles  of  Christ 
are  proved  by  the  character  of  Christ,  not  his  character 
by  the  miracles.^     This  is  another  apologetic  effort  which 

^  Robbins :  A  Christian  Apologetic. 


140     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

is  a  fatal  concession.  In  the  record  the  miracles  are 
plainly  put  forward  to  authenticate  the  person;  if  they 
are  construed  in  the  other  way  they  are,  in  an  age  whose 
mores  are  penetrated  by  instinctive  scorn  of  magic  and 
miracles,  a  dead  weight  on  the  system.  The  apology 
therefore  wins  nobody,  but  interposes  a  repelling  force. 
An  apology  is  always  a  matter  of  policy,  and  it  would  be 
far  better  to  drop  miracles  with  witches,  hell,  personal 
devil,  flood,  tower  of  Babel,  and  creation  in  six  days, 
in  silence.  The  various  attempts  of  the  eighteenth  century 
(Butler,  Paley)  to  sustain  religion  or  theology  by  anal- 
ogies, design,  and  so  on,  are  entirely  outside  of  our 
mores.  The  philosophical  or  logical  methods  no  longer 
have  any  force  on  the  minds  of  any  class  in  our  society. 
When  a  church  is  only  a  slightly  integrated  association 
for  ethical  discussion  and  united  social  effort,  religion 
ceases  to  be,  and  when  religion  withdraws  entirely  into 
the  domain  of  metaphysical  speculation,  it  is  of  no  account. 
In  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  those  Prot- 
estants who  wanted  to  maintain  religion  for  itself,  or  as 
an  end  in  itself,  did  what  the  situation  called  for;  they 
made  religion  once  more  ritual  and  tried  to  revive  the 
"Catholic  faith"  without  the  Pope.  That  would  be  a 
revival,  to  a  great  extent,  of  mediaeval  ecclesiasticism 
and  mores.  W^e  are  therefore  witnesses  of  a  struggle 
to  stem  the  tide  of  the  mores  by  concerted  action  and 
tactics  in  the  interest  of  mediaeval  religion.  At  the 
same  time  the  mores  of  modern  civilization  are  sapping 
the  foundations,  not  only  of  mediaeval  and  Greek  Chris- 
tianity, but  also  of  Mohammedanism  and  Buddhism. 
The  high-church  or  ritualistic  movement  is  therefore  a 
rally  in  the  battle  which  has  been  going  on  for  five 
hundred  years  between  mediaeval  Christianity  and  the 
improved  mores. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES  141 

In  the  fifteenth  century  the  great  inventions,  the 
geographical  discoveries,  the  extension  of  commerce, 
the  growth  of  capital,  the  rise  of  the  middle  class,  the 
revival  of  learning,  the  growth  of  great  dynastic  states, 
destroyed  the  ideals  of  poverty,  obedience,  and  chastity. 
The  idea  of  Catholicity  died  just  as  the  idea  of  the 
Crusades  did:  it  was  recognized  as  a  chimsera.  The 
Church  was  not  doing  the  work  it  stood  for  in  the  world. 
These  were  fatal  facts  and  courage  was  found  to  face 
them.  It  was  the  mores  which  shifted  —  moreover,  all 
the  bad  as  well  as  the  good  of  the  mores  entered  into  the 
change. 

The  mores  are  a  vast  and  complex  mass  of  acts  and 
thoughts  —  not  some  good  and  some  bad,  but  all  mixed 
in  quality.  All  the  elements  are  there  always.  The 
sects  deride  and  denounce  each  other  and  they  always 
select  material  for  their  jibes  from  what  they  allege  to 
be  the  facts  about  each  other's  influence  on  the  mores. 

The  Christian  Church  disapproved  of  luxury  and 
ornament  and  repressed  them  in  the  mores  of  Christen- 
dom until  the  fourteenth  century.  The  Renaissance 
brought  in  pagan  ideas  of  beauty,  art,  ornament,  pleasure, 
and  joy  in  life,  from  which  luxury  arose.  In  the  present 
mores  of  all  civilized  peoples  the  love  of  luxury  is  strong. 
It  is  increasing  and  is  spreading  to  all  classes;  those  who 
cannot  enjoy  it  think  themselves  wronged  by  the  social 
order.  This  sentiment  is  one  of  the  very  strongest  in 
the  masses;  it  characterizes  the  age  and  is  one  of  those 
forces  which  change  the  face  of  institutions  and  produce 
social  war. 

The  change  of  interest,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  to 
the  philosophy  and  the  paganism  of  the  classics  included 
a  great  reduction  in  the  other-worldliness  of  the  Middle 
Ages.     The  point  of  interest  was  in  this  world  and  this 


142     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

life,  without  denial  of  the  truth  of  a  future  life;  terror  of 
the  future  world  and  anxiety  to  know  how  to  provide  for 
it,  with  eager  seizure  of  the  sacramental  and  sacerdotal 
means  which  the  Church  provided,  all  declined.  The 
Renaissance  tried  to  renew  the  Greek  joy  in  life  with  art, 
pleasure,  music,  grace,  social  enjoyment,  freedom,  and 
luxury,  instead  of  asceticism,  ritual,  ecclesiasticism,  rigid 
authority,  distrust,  and  gloom.  The  religious  wars 
greatly  interfered  with  the  programme  of  the  Renais- 
sance. They  partly  dispelled  gayety  and  grace.  It  was 
in  the  mores  that  the  changes  occurred.  Churches  fell 
to  decay;  monasteries  disappeared;  chantries  were  sup- 
pressed; clergymen  abandoned  their  calling;  pilgrim- 
ages, processions,  retreats  —  all  were  neglected.  Some 
lamented  and  protested;  others  applauded;  the  greatest 
number  were  indifferent.  The  attitude  depended  on  the 
place  and  circumstances,  above  all  upon  commercial  and 
industrial  interests  and  upon  intellectual  attainments. 
The  great  fact  was  that  faith  in  sacramentarianism  as  a 
philosophy  of  this  life  and  the  other  was  broken,  and  the 
mores  which  had  been  the  outcome  of  that  faith  fell 
into  neglect.  The  Counter-reformation  arose  from  sup- 
posed effects  of  the  Church  schism  on  the  mores.  The 
removal  of  the  other  world  to  a  remoter  place  in  human 
interest  was  a  great  change  in  religion;  at  its  best,  mod- 
ern religion  became  a  guide  of  life  here,  not  a  prepara- 
tion for  another  life.  Modern  thought  has  been  realistic 
and  naturalistic,  and  the  mores  have  all  conformed  to 
this  world-philosophy.  The  other-worldliness  has  been 
ethical.  It  has  been  at  war  with  the  materialism  of  this 
world,  a  war  which  is  in  the  mores,  for  we  are  largely 
under  the  dominion  of  those  secondary  or  remoter  dogmas 
deduced  from  grand  conceptions  of  world-philosophy  and 
inculcated  as  absolute  authority.     Our  mores  at  the  same 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES  143 

time  instinctively  tend  toward  realistic  and  naturalistic 
views  of  life  for  which  a  new  world-philosophy  is  growing 
up.  Here  we  have  the  explanation  of  the  gulf  which 
is  constantly  widening  between  the  "modern  spirit" 
and  the  traditional  religion.  Some  cling  to  the  tradi- 
tional religion  in  one  or  another  of  its  forms,  which,  after 
all,  represent  only  the  grades  of  departure  from  the 
mediaeval  form  toward  complete  harmony  with  the 
modern  mores.  What  the  mores  always  represent  is 
the  struggle  to  live  as  well  as  possible  under  the  condi- 
tions. Traditions,  so  far  as  they  come  out  of  other 
conditions  and  are  accepted  as  independent  authorities 
in  the  present  conditions,  are  felt  as  hindrances.  It  is 
because  our  religious  traditions  now  do  not  assume 
authority,  but  seek  to  persuade,  that  active  war  against 
them  has  ceased  and  that  they  are  treated  with  more 
respect  at  present  than  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 

Other- worldliness  —  that  is,  care  about  the  life  after 
death  and  anxiety  to  secure  bliss  there  by  proper  action 
here  —  occupied  a  large  share  of  the  interest  of  mediaeval 
men.  Another  element  was  feudalism,  a  form  of  society 
which  arises  under  given  conditions,  as  we  see  from  the 
numerous  cases  of  it  in  history.  Mediaeval  society  shows 
us  a  great  population  caught  up  in  the  drift  of  these  two 
currents,  one  of  world-philosophy  and  the  other  of  socie- 
tal environment,  and  working  out  all  social  customs  and 
institutions  into  conformity  with  them.  The  force  of 
this  philosophy  and  the  energy  of  the  men  are  astounding. 
In  the  civil  world  there  w^as  disintegration,  but  in  the 
moral  world  there  was  coherence  and  comprehensiveness 
in  the  choice  of  ideals  and  in  the  pursuit  of  them.  In 
the  thirteenth  century  there  was  a  culmination  in  which 
the  vigorous  expansion  of  all  the  elements  reached  a 


144     ESSAYS  OF  WILLLVM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

degree  of  development  which  is  amazing.  The  men  of 
the  time  fell  into  the  modes  of  feudalism  as  if  it  had  been 
the  order  of  nature;  they  accepted  it  as  such.  They 
accepted  the  leadership  of  the  Church  with  full  satis- 
faction. Preaching  and  ritual,  with  popular  poetry  aided 
by  symbolism  in  art,  were  the  only  ways  of  acting  on  the 
minds  of  the  mass;  there  was  no  tendency  to  reflection 
and  criticism  any  more  than  among  barbarians.  The 
mores  were  the  simple,  direct,  and  naive  expression  of 
the  prevailing  interests  of  the  period;  that  is  why  they 
are  so  strong  and  their  interaction  is  so  vigorous.  The 
sanction  of  excommunication  was  frightful  in  its  effect  on 
beliefs  and  acts.  The  canon  law  is  an  astonishing  prod- 
uct of  the  time;  it  is  really  a  codification  of  the  mores 
modified  somewhat,  especially  in  the  later  additions,  by 
the  bias  which  the  Church  wanted  to  impress  on  the  mores. 
It  is  because  the  canon  law  is  fictitious  in  its  pretended 
historical  authority,  and  because  the  citations  in  it  from 
the  Fathers  are  selected  and  interpreted  for  a  purpose, 
that  it  really  expressed  just  the  mores  of  the  time.  "The 
Decretals  were  invented  to  furnish  what  was  entirely 
lacking;  that  is,  a  documentary  authority,  running  back 
to  Apostolic  times,  for  the  divine  institution  of  the  pri- 
macy of  the  Pope  and  of  the  teaching  oflice  of  bishops."  ^ 
The  period  entirely  lacked  historical  sense  and  critical 
method;  what  it  had  received  from  the  last  preceding 
generation  was  and  must  have  been  always.  But  that 
was  the  mores.  Horror  of  heretics,  witches,  Moham- 
medans, Jews  was  in  them,  and  so  were  all  the  other 
intense  faiths,  loves,  desires,  hates,  and  efforts  of  the 
period.  In  the  lack  of  reading,  travel,  and  discussion 
there  was  very  little  skepticism.     Life  went  on  from  day 

^  Eicken,  H.  von:  Geschichte   iind   System  der  mittelalterlichen  Weltan- 
schauung, 656. 


RELIGION  AND  THE  MORES  145 

to  day  by  repetition  along  grooves  of  usage  and  habit. 
Such  Hfe  makes  strong  mores,  but  also  rigid  and 
mechanical  ones.  In  modern  times  the  thirst  for  reality 
has  developed  criticism  and  skepticism;  everything  is 
discussed  and  questioned.  There  are  few  certainties  in 
our  knowledge.  Our  mores  are  flexible,  elastic,  and  to 
some  extent  unstable,  but  they  have  strong  guarantees. 
They  are  to  a  great  extent  rational,  because  if  they  are 
not  rational  they  perish;  they  are  open  and  intelligent, 
because  they  are  supported  by  literature  and  wide  dis- 
cussion; they  are  also  tough,  and  rather  organic  than 
mechanical. 

All  modern  students  of  the  mediaeval  world  have  noted 
the  contradictions  and  inconsistencies  of  living  and 
thinking.  Of  these  the  most  important  is  the  contra- 
diction between  renunciation  of  the  world  and  ruling 
the  world;  a  Gregory  VII  or  an  Innocent  III  goes  from 
one  to  the  other  of  these  without  a  sense  of  moral  jar, 
and  the  modern  students  who  fix  their  minds  on  one  or 
the  other  have  two  different  conceptions  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Phantasms  and  ideals  have  no  consistency.  A 
man  who  deals  with  them  instead  of  dealing  with  realities 
may  have  a  kaleidoscopic  relation  between  his  ideas, 
which  relation  may  be  symmetrical  and  poetically  beaut- 
iful; but  he  will  have  no  nexus  of  thought  between  his 
ideas,  and  therefore  no  productive  combination  of  them. 
The  mediaeval  people  had  a  great  number  of  ideals,  and 
they  went  from  one  to  the  other  by  abrupt  transitions 
without  any  difficulty.  They  had  intense  feelings  and 
enthusiasm  for  their  ideals,  but  when  an  intense  feeling 
instead  of  deep  knowledge  is  the  basis  of  conviction  there 
is  no  mental  or  moral  consistency. 

I  have  maintained  that  the  religion  comes  out  of  the 
mores  and  is  controlled  by  them.     The  religion,  however, 


146     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

sums  up  the  most  general  and  philosophic  elements  in 
the  mores  and  inculcates  them  as  religious  dogmas. 
It  also  forms  precepts  on  them.  For  an  example  we 
may  note  how  the  humanitarianism  of  modern  mores 
has  colored  and  warped  Christianity.  Humanitarianism 
grew  out  of  economic  power  developed  by  commerce,  inven- 
tions, steam,  and  electricity.  Humanitarianism  led  to 
opposition  to  slavery,  and  to  the  emancipation  of  women. 
These  are  not  doctrines  of  the  Bible  or  of  Middle-Age 
Christianity.  They  were  imposed  on  modern  religion 
by  the  mores.  Then  they  came  from  the  religion  to 
the  modern  world  as  religious  ideas  and  duties,  with 
religious  and  ecclesiastical  sanctions.  This  is  the  usual 
interplay  of  the  mores  and  religion. 


THE   MORES   OF   THE   PRESENT  AND 
THE   FUTURE 


VI 

THE   MORES   OF   THE   PRESENT   AND 
THE    FUTURE 

[ 1909  ] 

THE  great  utility  of  studying  the  origin  and  history 
of  the  mores  would  be  to  form  judgments  about 
their  present  status  and  future  tendency.  The  future 
tendency  can  never  be  discussed  beyond  the  immediate 
future  without  running  into  predictions  which  would 
always  be  vague  and  in  a  high  degree  uncertain.  For 
instance,  there  is  now  more  or  less  discussion  about 
divorce,  and  it  will  unquestionably  affect  the  mores  about 
marriage.  Whether  the  discussion  properly  reflects  any 
movement  of  popular  interest  is  an  important  question 
with  regard  to  the  present  status  and  tendency.  Also, 
if  we  could  reach  results  with  regard  to  the  present  drift 
of  things,  we  might  become  convinced  of  the  probable 
changes  in  the  marriage  institution,  but  more  definite  or 
far-reaching  predictions  about  marriage  would  be  unwise. 
It  will  be  well  to  begin  with  a  restatement  of  the 
definition  of  the  mores.  When  a  number  of  men  living 
in  neighborhood  have  the  same  needs,  each  one  of  them 
attempts  to  satisfy  his  need  as  well  as  he  can  whenever 
it  recurs.  They  notice  each  other's  efforts  and  select 
the  attempt  which  satisfies  the  need  best  with  the  least 
pain  or  exertion.  A  selection  results  by  which  one  way 
becomes  customary  for  all  —  a  habit  for  each  and  a 
custom  for  the  society.  This  way  is  a  folkway.  It  has 
the  power  of  a  habit  and  custom,  and  is  carried  on  by 

[149] 


150     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

tradition.  It  has  the  character  originally  of  an  experi- 
ment. It  is  established  by  selection  and  approved  by 
experience.  Here  then  we  have  some  reflection  and  some 
judgment:  the  reflection  is  caused  by  pleasure  or  pain, 
which  the  lowest  savages  experience  and  use  for  criticism; 
and  the  judgments  are  the  most  simple,  consisting  only 
in  comparison  of  effort  and  satisfaction.  From  the  reflec- 
tion and  judgment  there  arises  at  last  an  opinion  as  to 
the  relation  of  the  mode  of  satisfying  needs  to  welfare. 
Tliis  is  a  moral  opinion;  namely,  an  opinion  that  a  usage 
is  favorable  to  welfare.  When  a  folk  way  has  this  moral 
and  reflective  judgment  added  to  it,  it  becomes  a  part 
/  of  the  mores.  The  moral  inferences  become  wider  and 
vaguer  as  they  go  on,  but  they  constitute,  when  taken 
together,  the  best  thinking  men  can  do  on  human  life 
and  wisdom  in  it.  The  mores  ^re  the  customs  in  which 
life  is  held  when  taken  together  with  the  moral  judgments 
as  to  the  bearing  of  the  same  on  welfare. 

The  mores,  in  their  origin,  w^ere  immediately  connected 
w4th  ghost  fear  and  religion,  because  they  came  down  by 
tradition  from  ancestors.  This  gave  them  the  sanction 
of  a  high  and  vague  authority  from  the  oth^  world  and 
created  the  first  notion  of  duty.  Together  these  ele- 
ments made  up  the  mental  life  of  men  for  ages,  when 
they  were  laying  the  foundations  of  all  our  mental  opera- 
tions and  forming  our  first  mental  outfit. 

I  use  the  word  " folkways''  for  ways  of  doing  things 
which  have  little  or  no  moral  element.  The  greatest 
and  best  example  is  language.  Language  is  habit  and 
custom;  its  formation  is  made  by  acts  of  judgment, 
although  the  consideration  is  slight,  the  judgment  is 
vague  and  unconscious,  and  the  authority  of  tradition 
prevails.  Uneducated  people  make  or  destroy  a  language, 
in  their  life,  satisfying  their  interests  and  needs;  expe- 


MORES  OF  THE   PRESENT  AND   FUTURE     151 

diency  seems  to  be  the  highest  motive.  Abortion  and 
infanticide  are  folkways  which  simply  satisfy  the  desire 
to  avoid  care  and  toil.  Children  are  a  great  trouble 
and  adults  try  to  shirk  the  burden;  they  adopt  direct 
means  to  get  rid  of  it.  Religion  sanctifies  the  acts  and 
they  become  customary;  then  they  are  a  law  and  beyond 
argument.  In  time,  however,  conditions  change.  If, 
for  example,  warriors  are  needed,  then  abortion  and 
infanticide  do  not  seem  wise  beyond  question;  the  means 
of  getting  food  may  be  easier,  and  affection  has  a 
chance  to  grow.  Then  these  folkways  are  subjected  to 
reflection  again  and  a  new  judgment  is  formed,  with  the 
result  that  the  customs  are  set  aside  by  doubt  and  revolt. 
While  they  last  they  are  mores,  not  folkways.  The  murder 
of  children  had  a  moral  judgment  of  wisdom  and  right 
policy  in  it  while  it  was  practiced,  and  the  same  may  be 
said  of  the  custom  of  killing  the  old. 

What  now  are  some  of  the  leading  features  in  the  mores 
of  civilized  society  at  the  present  time.^^  Undoubtedly 
they  are  monogamy,  anti-slavery,  and  democracy.  All 
people  now  are  more  nervous  than  anybody  used  to  be. 
Social  ambition  is  great  and  is  prevalent  in  all  classes. 
The  idea  of  class  is  unpopular  and  is  not  understood. 
There  is  a  superstitious  yearning  for  equality.  There  is 
a  decided  preference  for  a  city  life,  and  a  stream  of  popu- 
lation from  the  country  into  big  cities.  These  are  facts 
of  the  mores  of  the  time,  and  our  societies  are  almost 
unanimous  in  their  response  if  there  is  any  question 
raised  on  these  matters. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  discuss  the  mores;  we  can  hardly 
criticise  them,  for  they  are  our  law  of  right.  We  are  all 
in  them,  born  in  them,  and  made  by  them.  How  can 
we  rise  above  them  to  pass  judgment  on  them?  Our 
mores  are  very  different  from  those  of  the  Middle  Ages. 


152     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Mediaeval  people  conceived  of  society  under  forms  of 
status  as  generally  as  we  think  of  it  under  forms  of  indi- 
vidual liberty.  The  mores  of  the  Orient  and  the  Occi- 
dent differ  from  each  other  now  as  they  apparently 
always  have  differed:  the  Orient  is  a  region  where  time, 
faith,  tradition,  and  patience  rule,  while  the  Occident 
forms  ideals  and  plans  and  spends  energy  and  enterprise 
to  make  new  things  with  thoughts  of  progress.  All 
details  of  life  follow  the  leading  ways  of  thought  of  each 
group.  We  can  compare  and  judge  ours  and  theirs, 
but  independent  judgment  of  our  owti,  without  compari- 
son with  other  times  or  other  places,  is  possible  only 
within  narrow  limits. 

Let  us  first  take  up  the  nervous  desire  and  exertion 
which  mark  the  men  of  our  time  in  the  W^estern  civilized 
societies.  There  is  a  wide  popular  belief  in  what  is  called 
progress.  The  masses  in  all  civilized  states  strain  toward 
success  in  some  adopted  line.  Struggling  and  stri\dng 
are  passionate  tendencies  which  take  possession  of  groups 
from  time  to  time.  The  newspapers,  the  popular  litera- 
ture, and  the  popular  speakers  show  this  current  and 
popular  tendency.  This  is  what  makes  the  mores.  A 
select  minority  may  judge  otherwise,  and  in  time  their 
judgment  may  be  accepted  and  ratified  and  may  make 
'  the  mores  of  another  age;  but  the  mores  are  always  the 
ways  of  the  great  masses  at  a  time  and  place.  The 
French  were  formerly  thought  to  be  mercurial,  the 
English  sober,  and  the  Germans  phlegmatic.  The  Ger- 
mans have  become  nervous;  they  struggle  feverishly 
for  success  and  preeminence;  the  war  of  1871  and  the 
foundation  of  the  German  Empire  have  made  them 
nationally  proud,  and  made  them  feel  on  a  level  with 
any  other  state.  Such  a  change  was  sure  to  produce 
great  changes  in  the  mores  within  two  or  three  generations. 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE     153 

Germany  now  has  ambition  for  the  first  place  among 
nations;  she  is  sensitive  and  suspicious,  and  often  seems 
quarrelsome.  The  English,  in  the  Boer  War,  went 
through  crises  of  excitement  of  which  it  was  supposed 
they  were  insusceptible.  The  French,  burdened  by  debt 
and  taxes,  feel  some  sense  of  losing  ground  in  the  rank 
of  nations,  and  the  national  party  is  a  product  of  this 
feeling.  It  seems  to  believe  that  a  truculent  and  fero- 
cious behavior  will  win  adherents.  Perhaps  it  is  right, 
in  view  of  the  nervous  temper  of  the  age  —  certainly  the 
old  love  of  moderation  and  sobriety  in  politics  seems  to 
be  diminishing.  The  United  States  is  stimulated  by  its 
growth  and  prosperity  to  unlimited  hope  and  ambition. 
Professor  Giddings  ^  thinks  that  he  has  proved  statistic- 
ally that  the  "mental  'mode'  of  the  American  people  as 
a  whole  is  ideo-emotional  to  dogmatical-emotional,"  and 
that  the  market  for  books  confirms  this.  The  market 
for  books  could  prove  only  the  mental  mode  of  that  part 
of  the  public  which  reads  books.  What  fraction  is  that? 
It  would  be  most  interesting  and  important  to  know. 
Of  the  books  published,  Professor  Giddings  finds  that 
fifty  per  cent,  aim  to  please,  and  appeal  to  emotion  or 
sentiment;  forty  per  cent,  aim  to  convert,  and  appeal 
to  belief,  ethical  emotion,  or  self-interest;  eight  per 
cent,  are  critical  and  aim  to  instruct  —  they  appeal  to 
reason.  This  means  that  our  literature  is  almost  entirely 
addressed  to  the  appetite  for  day-dreaming,  romantic 
longings,  and  sentimentalism,  to  theoretical  interest  in 
crime,  adventure,  marital  infelicity,  family  tragedies,  and 
the  pleasure  of  emotional  excitement,  while  a  large  part 
of  it  turns  upon  ethical  emotion  and  ignorant  zeal  in 
social  matters.  This  literature  reflects  the  mores  and  at 
the  same  time  strengthens  them.     The  people  who  are 

1  Psychological  Review,  VIII,  337. 


154     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

educated  on  it  are  trained  either  to  Philistinism  or  to 
become  the  victims  of  suggestion.  No  question  pro- 
duced by  the  fall  of  silver  could  possibly  be  a  proper 
political  question.  When  it  was  proposed,  in  the  United 
States,  to  make  the  adoption  of  the  single  silver  stand- 
ard a  party  issue  and  to  take  a  vote  on  it,  consequences 
were  produced  which  were  interesting  for  the  mores.  In 
the  first  place,  there  were  interests  at  stake  —  those  of 
the  silver  miners  and  the  debtors.  Interests  dominate 
modern  politics,  but  always  more  or  less  secretly,  because 
it  is  not  admitted  in  the  mores  to  be  right  that  they  should 
dominate.  Hence  another  pretext  must  be  put  forward 
to  cover  the  interest.  The  best  pretext  is  always  an 
abstruse  doctrine  in  the  theory  of  public  welfare.  A 
protective  tariff  is  never  advocated  because  it  will  enable 
some  citizens  to  win  wealth  by  taxing  others;  it  is  always 
advocated  as  a  prosperity  policy  for  the  country.  Henry 
C.  Carey  elevated  a  protective  tariff  to  a  philosophy  of 
society.  W^hen  the  New  York  courts  held  a  law  to  be 
valid  which  forbade  a  saloon  to  be  licensed  within  tw^o 
hundred  feet  of  a  schoolhouse,  the  saloon-keepers  attacked 
the  schools  as  a  nuisance  detrimental  to  property.^  The 
advocates  of  a  single  silver  standard  put  forward  their 
proposition  as  a  prosperity  policy,  and  they  elaborated 
a  philosophy  to  serve  as  a  major  premise  to  it.  Their 
ultimate  philosophy  was  that  gold  is  a  mischief-maker 
to  mankind,  while  silver  is  an  agent  of  good.  Obviously 
this  is  mythology,  and  is  not  capable  of  discussion.  The 
silver  question  as  a  political  issue  was,  therefore,  a  recent 
and  very  striking  proof  of  the  persistence  in  the  mores  of 
a  great  modern  civilized  state  of  the  methods  of  mythol- 
ogy which  have  come  down  to  us  from  prehistoric  man. 
Mythology  is  in  the  popular  mores. 

1  Riis,  J.  A.:  The  Battle  with  the  Slum,  336. 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND   FUTURE      155 

There  are  mores  corresponding  to  each  of  the  great 
stages  of  the  industrial  organization  —  hunting,  herding, 
and  agricultural.  When  two  groups  which  are  on  differ- 
ent stages  are  neighbors,  or  when  one  part  of  a  group 
advances  to  another  stage,  while  the  remainder  still 
practices  the  old  form,  conflicts  arise.  The  Indian  and 
Iranian  branches  of  the  Aryans  separated  under  intense 
enmity  and  mutual  contempt  when  the  Iranians  became 
tillers.  All  the  ways  of  one  people  which  conform  to 
its  industrial  pursuits  are  an  abomination  to  the  other. 
The  best  explanation  yet  suggested  of  the  statements 
of  Csesar  and  Tacitus  about  the  Germans  is  that  the 
Germans  were,  at  that  period,  between  nomadism  and 
settled  agriculture.  There  is  a  deep  contrast  of  mores 
between  town  and  country,  agriculture  on  the  one  side 
and  manufactures,  commerce,  banking,  etc.,  on  the  other, 
and  this  contrast  may,  at  any  time,  rise  to  an  antagonism. 
The  antagonism  is  kept  down  if  the  two  classes  meet 
often;  it  is  developed  if  they  become  strictly  separated. 
The  town  looks  upon  the  country  as  rustic  and  unculti- 
vated; the  country  looks  upon  the  town  as  vicious  and 
corrupt.  The  industrial  interests  of  the  two  are  antag- 
onistic, and  one  may  be  subjected  to  the  other,  as  is 
always  the  case  under  a  protective  tariff,  for  the  pro- 
tective system  never  can  do  anything  but  make  the 
stronger  form  of  industry  carry  the  weaker.  It  is  a 
characteristic  of  our  time  that  in  all  civilized  countries 
the  population  is  moving  from  the  country  to  the  towns. 
This  movement  is  not  due  to  the  same  forces  in  all 
countries.  Wherever  agriculture  is  burdened  by  taxes 
to  favor  manufacturing,  the  legislation  causes,  or  in- 
tensifies, the  movement.  It  is  not  probable  that  the 
love  of  luxury,  excitement,  social  intercourse,  and  amuse- 
ment is  any  greater  now  than  it  always  has  been,  but 


156     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

popular  literature  has  spread  the  hunger  for  it  to  classes 
of  people  who  never  felt  it  formerly.  The  hunger  enters 
into  the  mores  and  becomes  a  characteristic  of  the  age. 

The  people  in  the  slums  and  tenement  houses  will 
not  give  up  the  enjoyment  of  the  streets  for  any  amount 
of  rural  comfort.  Other  classes  try  to  help  them,  assum- 
ing that,  to  them,  crowds,  noise,  filth,  contagious  diseases, 
and  narrow  quarters,  must  be  painful.  The  evidence 
is  that  they  like  the  life,  and  are  indifferent  to  what 
others  consider  its  evils  and  discomforts.  They  like  it 
because  it  satisfies  the  strongest  desires  in  the  mores  of 
our  time.  The  people  in  the  slums  feel  the  same  desires 
as  those  other  people  who  have  clubs,  balls,  visitors, 
the  park,  opera,  theater,  and  all  the  other  means  of 
excitement,  gossip,  and  entertainment  which  make  up 
fashionable  city  life. 

In  Germany  it  is  said  that  the  country  population 
still  increases  rapidly  by  a  high  birth  rate.^  When  the 
land  is  all  taken  up  this  means  that  there  is  a  surplus 
in  the  rural  population  which  goes  into  the  wages  class, 
and  a  part  of  it  seeks  the  towns  to  become  unskilled 
laborers  or  handicraftsmen.  It  was  formerly  believed 
that  great  cities  consume  population;  that  there  is  a 
waste  which  would  produce  diminution  if  it  were  not  for 
the  influx  from  the  country.  City  life  exercises  a  selec- 
tion on  this  immigration  from  the  country;  a  part  of  it 
is  consumed  by  vice  and  misery  and  disappears;  another 
part  advances  to  greater  social  power  in  two  or  three 
generations;  another  part  settles  into  the  tenement 
houses  and  recruits  the  city  proletariat.  Nowhere  in 
the  world,  perhaps,  are  the  effects  of  this  migration  from 
the  country  to  the  city  so  strikingly  apparent  as  in  New 

^  Ammon,  O. :  Die  Gesellschaf tsordnung  und  ihre  natiirlichen  Grundlagen, 
94. 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE      157 

England,  for  here  we  see  farms  abandoned,  houses  torn 
down,  and  land  returning  to  a  state  of  nature.  Cities, 
however,  now  have  a  number  of  institutions  of  rescue 
and  protection,  which  are  believed  to  redeem  the  old 
destruction,  so  that  cities  do  not,  nowadays,  consume 
population.  The  migration  affects  the  mores  of  both 
the  rural  and  the  urban  population.  Their  ideas,  stand- 
ards, ways  of  looking  at  things,  ambitions,  appetites, 
concepts  of  right  and  wrong,  and  their  judgments  on 
all  the  policy  of  life  are  affected  by  the  efflux  and  reflux 
between  town  and  country. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  and  far-reaching  features 
in  modern  mores  is  the  unwillingness  to  recognize  a 
vow  or  to  enforce  a  vow  by  any  civil  or  ecclesiastical 
process,  although  vows  have  the  full  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture.^ It  is  by  the  mores  that  vows  have  been  judged 
wrong,  and  if  they  are  made,  neglect  to  fulfill  them  is 
regarded  with  indifference.  In  modern  mores  it  is  allowed 
that  a  man  may  change  his  mind  as  long  as  he  lives. 
This  view  is  produced  by  the  doctrine  of  liberty.  At 
the  most  he  may  incur  liability  for  damages,  if  his  vow 
causes  damage  to  somebody  else.  The  marriage  vow  is 
the  only  one  which  remains  in  our  mores,  and  no  doubt 
the  leniency  of  divorce  has  been  largely  due  to  the 
unwillingness  to  enforce  a  vow  by  which  it  may  appear 
later  that  one's  life  career  has  been  injured.  It  does  not 
at  all  lie  in  the  mores  to  give  the  vow  prominence  as  the 
aspect  of  marriage  which  determines  what  it  is.  On 
the  contrary,  the  wedding  ceremony  is  a  striking  case  of 
ritual,  since  people  attach  importance  to  the  ceremony, 
not  to  the  rational  sense  of  what  is  said  and  done. 

The  mores  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
were  marked  by  the  decline  of  the  dominion  of  the  clas- 

1  Deut.  xxiii,  21. 


158     ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMXER 

sical  culture  which  had  prevailed  since  the  Renaissance. 
In  art  this  was  marked  by  a  return  to  nature  as  the  only 
model  and  an  abandonment  of  the  classical  models.  In 
architecture  it  was  marked  by  a  revival  of  Gothic  and 
Renaissance  forms,  but  with  a  wide  eclecticism,  the  out- 
come of  which  is  not  yet  reached.  In  religion  two  ten- 
dencies were  developed,  one  to  medisevalism,  the  other 
to  agnosticism.  What  was  most  important  for  the  mores 
was  the  toleration  of  each  other,  with  which  these  oppo- 
site tendencies  in  religion  existed  side  by  side.  ^Militant 
infidelity,  or  religion,  was  regarded  as  bad  form,  and 
heresy  hunting  became  ridiculous.  The  popular  phi- 
losophy became  realistic,  and  the  tests  of  value  which 
were  accepted  were  more  and  more  frankly  commercial; 
*' ideal  good"  lost  esteem  and  "material  good"  controlled. 
This  was  nothing  new  in  the  history  of  mankind,  but 
the  opportunities  of  wealth,  comfort,  and  luxury  never 
before  were  offered  to  the  whole  of  a  society  in  any  such 
manner  and  degree,  and  the  utilities  of  wealth  for  all 
pm-poses  of  mankind  never  were  so  obvious  and  imme- 
diate. The  classical  culture  and  the  religious  philosophy 
had  offered  ideals  which  were  no  longer  highly  valued, 
and  the  way  was  clear  for  the  dominion  of  materialistic 
standards  and  ideals.  They  spread  everywhere,  in  spite 
of  all  protests  and  denials.  The  state  won  greatly  in 
importance,  and  political  institutions  extended  their 
operations  over  the  field  of  the  mores.  Political  institu- 
tions took  the  place  of  ecclesiastical  institutions  as 
adjuncts  of  the  economic  struggle  for  existence.  The 
eighteenth  century  had  bequeathed  to  the  nineteenth  a 
great  mass  of  abstract  notions  about  rights  and  about 
the  ultimate  notions  of  political  philosophy,  and  in  the 
nineteenth  century  many  of  these  notions  were  reduced 
to  actuality  in  constitutions,  laws,  and  judicial  rulings. 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE       159 

The  masses  in  all  civilized  nations  were  led  to  believe 
that  their  welfare  could  be  obtained  by  dogmatic  propo- 
sitions if  such  propositions  were  enacted  into  constitutions 
and  laws.  This  faith  has  entered  into  the  mores  of  all 
civilized  men  and  now  rules  their  discussion  of  social 
questions.  Rights,  justice,  liberty,  and  equality  are  the 
watchwords  instead  of  the  church,  faith,  heaven,  and 
hell.  The  amount  of  superstition  is  not  much  changed, 
but  it  now  attaches  to  politics,  not  to  religion. 

The  grand  controlling  fact  in  modern  society  is  that 
the  earth  is  underpopulated  on  the  existing  stage  of  the 
arts.  As  a  consequence  men  are  in  demand.  The  human 
race  is  going  through  a  period  of  enlargement  with  ease 
and  comfort;  accordingly  a  philosophy  of  optimism 
prevails,  and  the  world-beatifiers  reign  in  philosophy. 
Since,  as  a  fact,  the  struggle  for  existence  and  com- 
petition of  life  are  not  severe,  the  philosophy  prevails 
that  so  they  always  ought  to  be.  An  ethical  ideal  is 
carried  into  nature.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  great  masses 
of  the  human  race  get  on  very  well  with  a  minimum  of 
education,  for  the  conditions  favor  most,  proportionately, 
those  who  are  worst  off  —  the  unskilled  laborers.  Hence 
we  find  it  preached  as  a  doctrine  that  men,  if  in  crowds, 
know  the  truth,  feel  virtuously,  and  act  wisely  by  intui- 
tion, without  education  or  training. 

All  modern  economic  developments  have  tended  to 
level  classes  and  ranks,  and  therefore  to  create  democracy, 
and  to  throw  political  power  into  the  hands  of  the  most 
numerous  class;  the  courtiers  of  power,  therefore,  turn 
to  the  masses  with  the  same  flattery  and  servility  which 
they  used  to  pay  to  kings,  prelates,  and  nobles.  At  every 
boundary  line  at  which  the  interests  of  individuals  or 
groups  meet  in  the  competition  of  life,  there  is  strife 
and   friction,   and   at  all   such   points   there   are  rights 


160     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

which  are  in  the  mores  or  the  laws  and  which  have  been 
produced  by  the  need  to  solve  the  collisions  of  power 
and  interest  in  peace.  There  is,  therefore,  always  another 
resource  for  the  party  which  has  been  defeated  in  the 
competition  of  life;  they  can  appeal  to  rights  and  fight 
over  again,  on  the  political  domain,  what  they  have  lost 
on  the  economic  domain.  Inasmuch  as  the  masses 
cannot  win  on  the  economic  domain  because  their  oppo- 
nents, though  few  in  number,  have  talent,  knowledge, 
craft,  and  capital,  and  inasmuch  as  the  masses  have 
political  power,  this  appeal  from  the  field  of  economic 
effort  to  that  of  politics  is  characteristic  of  the  age.  It 
now  gives  form  and  color  to  both  the  economic  and  politi- 
cal effort,  and  it  is  dominating  all  the  mores  which  have  to 
do  with  either.  The  master  of  industry  dare  not  neglect 
political  power;  the  statesman  cannot  maintain  an 
independent  footing  against  capitalistic  interest.  Pri- 
marily, we  see  a  war  between  plutocracy  and  democracy. 
Secondarily,  we  see  a  combination  of  the  two  loom  up  in 
the  future  —  the  apostles  of  socialism,  state  socialism, 
municipalization,  etc.,  are  all  working  for  it.  In  the  com- 
bination the  strongest  element  will  rule,  and  the  strongest 
element  is  capital.  The  defeat  and  decline  of  the  Demo- 
cratic political  party  in  the  United  States  within  forty 
years,  its  incompetence  as  an  opposition  party,  its  chase 
after  any  captivating  issue,  its  evolution  into  populism, 
coupled  with  administrative  folly,  the  fear  and  distrust 
which  it  has  consequently  inspired  in  all  who  have  any- 
thing, so  that  they  turn  to  the  ruling  party  for  security 
at  the  sacrifice  of  everything  else,  the  more  and  more 
complete  surrender,  at  the  same  time,  of  the  Republican 
party  to  the  character  of  a  conspiracy  to  hold  power 
and  use  it  for  plutocratic  ends,  are  phenomena  already 
observable  of  the  coming  consolidation  of  political  and 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE      161 

monetary  power.  The  more  industrial  and  pecuniary 
functions  are  confided  to  the  State  or  city,  the  more 
rapidly  will  this  result  be  brought  about.  The  place  to 
watch  to  see  whether  the  result  will  be  arrested  or  not  is 
in  the  mores.  Do  the  people  show  strong  political  sense .^^ 
Do  they  show  real  insight  into  their  own  institutions  and 
the  spirit  of  the  same,  so  that  they  cannot  be  deceived 
by  political  fallacies.^  Do  they  resist  the  allurements 
of  glory  and  cling  to  the  genuine  forces  which  make  for 
national  health  and  strength?  Are  they  cynical  about 
political  corruption,  or  honestly  outraged  by  it.^^  Is  their 
world-philosophy  ignoble.?  Do  they  resist  a  steal  because 
it  is  a  steal  or  because  they  are  not  in  it.?  Are  they 
captivated  by  appeals  to  national  vanity  or  do  they  turn 
aside  from  such  appeals  with  contempt.?  These  are  the 
questions  which  decide  the  trend  of  institutions  and 
the  destiny  of  states,  and  the  answer  to  them  must  be 
sought  in  the  mores. 

Parties  formed  on  interests  invent  dogmas  which  will 
serve  as  major  premises  for  the  especial  inferences  which 
will  suit  their  purpose.  These  are  the  "great  principles" 
of  history  which  are  always  preached  as  eternal  and 
immutable.  John  of  Salisbury,  the  friend  of  Thomas  a 
Becket,  taking  part  in  the  quarrel  of  the  prelate  with 
the  king,  which  really  was  a  quarrel  of  the  Roman  law 
concept  of  the  State  with  the  Church,  developed,  in  his 
Polycraticus,  notions  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
and  of  republican  self-government.  Guelphs  argued  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people  to  get  the  alliance  of  the  middle 
class  against  the  emperor,  in  Italy;  while  Ghibellines  used 
the  same  argument  to  get  the  alliance  of  the  middle  class 
against  the  popes,  in  Germany. ^     St.  Augustine  thought 

^  Betzold,  F.  von:  Die  Lehre  von  der  Volkssouveranetat  wahrend  des  Mittel- 
Alters,  in  Sybel's  Zeitschrift,  XXXVI,  313. 


I 


162     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GR.AHAM  SUMNER 

that  the  State  was  due  to  sin,  while  Gregory  VII  said 
that  it  was  the  work  of  the  devil.  This  was  in  order  to 
exalt  the  Church.  The  "two  sword"  doctrine  ^  furnished 
a  dogmatic  basis  for  mediaeval  society:  Pope  and  Emperor 
side  by  side,  with  the  Pope  above.  The  Church  was 
due  to  God,  the  State  was  a  human  invention.  Hence 
arose  the  doctrine  that  the  State  was  based  on  a  contract 
between  ruler  and  ruled,  and  the  inference  that  tyrannicide 
was  justifiable,  an  inference  which  was  so  frequently 
put  into  practice  in  the  sixteenth  century  that  its  fallacy 
was  demonstrated.  Any  ruler  of  whose  acts  anybody 
disapproved  w^as  a  tyrant.  Then  the  doctrine  of  con- 
tract was  changed  into  the  later  "social  compact"  of 
the  democratic  republican  form  with  natural  rights,  which 
ran  from  Grotius  to  Rousseau.  This  doctrine  was  used 
by  Mariana  and  other  Jesuits  against  the  absolute  kings 
(at  first,  of  Spain) ;  it  was  thoroughly  destructive  of  the 
mediaeval  doctrines  of  political  authority  and  of  rights. 

WTien  the  Americans,  in  1776,  revolted  against  the 
colonial  policy  of  England,  they  found  a  great  number  of 
principles  afloat,  and  had  great  trouble  to  select  the  one 
which  would  suit  their  purpose  without  suggesting  other 
inferences  which  would  be  unwelcome.  The  first  para- 
graph of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  contains  a 
number  of  these  great  principles  which  were  supposed 
to  be  axioms  of  political  philosophy.  In  1898,  when  we 
forced  our  rule  on  the  Philippine  Islands,  some  of  these 
principles  were  very  inconvenient.  In  time  we  shall 
have  to  drop  others  of  them.  There  are  no  dogmatic 
propositions  of  political  philosophy  which  are  universally 
and  always  true;  there  are  views  which  prevail,  at  a 
time,  for  a  while,  and  then  fade  away  and  give  place  to 
other  views.     Each  set  of  views  colors  the  mores  of  a 

iLuke  22:38. 


MORES  OF  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE     163 

period.  The  eighteenth  century  notions  about  equality, 
natural  rights,  classes,  etc.,  produced  nineteenth  century 
states  and  legislation,  all  strongly  humanitarian  in  faith 
and  temper;  at  the  present  time  the  eighteenth  century 
notions  are  disappearing,  and  the  mores  of  the  twentieth 
century  will  not  be  tinged  by  humanitarianism  as  those 
of  the  last  hundred  years  have  been.  If  the  State  should 
act  on  ideas  of  every  man's  duty,  instead  of  on  notions 
of  natural  rights,  evidently  institutions  and  usages  would 
undergo  a  great  transformation. 

While  the  views  of  rights  are  thus  afloat  on  the  tide 
of  interest  and  carry  with  them,  in  the  ebb  and  flow, 
a  great  mass  of  corollaries,  it  does  not  appear  that 
the  doctrine  and  institutions  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment are  being  more  thoroughly  understood  or  more 
firmly  established.  Yet  constitutional  government  is  the 
guarantee  of  interests  and  welfare.  It  is  a  product  of 
experience;  it  contains  institutions  by  which  collisions 
of  interest  can  be  adjusted  and  rights  can  be  secured. 
Yet  it  does  not  offer  many  definitions  or  dogmatic  state- 
ments about  rights  and  interests.  If  men  turn  from  the 
institutions  and  put  faith  in  abstract  propositions,  evi-  ^ 
dently  the  chances  of  welfare  will  be  greatly  changed. 
At  the  present  time  constitutional  institutions  are  the 
great  reliance  for  rights  and  justice  and  the  great  ground 
of  hope  and  confidence  in  the  future.  Nevertheless, 
constitutional  government  can  never  overcome  the  mores.  ^ 
We  have  plenty  of  cases  of  experiment  to  prove  that 
constitutional  institutions  of  the  best  type  fall  into 
corruption  and  decay  unless  the  virtues  of  political  self- 
control  exist  in  high  vigor  and  purity  in  the  mores  of  the 
society. 

We  see,  then,  in  the  status  and  outlook  of  the  present 
time,    these   facts:    underpopulation    of   the  globe   and 


164     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

increasing  control  of  natural  forces  give  easier  conditions 
for  the  struggle  for  existence.  This  means  the  most  to 
those  who  have  inherited  the  least.  It  is,  however, 
obviously  a  temporary  advantage,  for  the  human  race 
will,  in  a  few  generations,  find  itself  face  to  face  with 
overpopulation  and  harder  conditions.  In  the  mean- 
time philosophies  and  notions  win  general  acceptance 
which  are  relatively  true  in  the  exceptional  period. 
They  are  broadly  stated  and  confidently  accepted  in  the 
mores  and  in  legislation.  Rights  are  changed  in  popular 
opinion  and  in  constitutions,  and  the  location  of  po- 
litical power  is  shifted,  especially  as  between  classes; 
notions  about  property,  marriage,  family,  inheritance, 
and  so  on,  change  to  suit  facts  and  faiths  about  the 
struggle  for  existence.  Then  groups  and  parties  will 
form  and  war  will  occur  between  them.  Great  dogmas 
will  be  put  forth  at  all  stages  of  these  movements  and 
appropriate  watchwords  will  never  be  wanting. 


SOCIOLOGY 


VII 

SOCIOLOGY 

[ 1881  ] 

EACH  of  the  sciences  which,  by  giving  to  man  greater 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  nature,  has  enabled  him 
to  cope  more  intelligently  with  the  ills  of  life,  has  had  to 
fight  for  its  independence  of  metaphysics.  We  have  still 
lectures  on  metaphysical  biology  in  some  of  our  colleges 
and  in  some  of  our  public  courses,  but  biology  has  sub- 
stantially won  its  independence.  Anthropology  is  more 
likely  to  give  laws  to  metaphysics  than  to  accept  laws 
from  that  authority.  Sociology,  however,  the  latest  of 
this  series  of  sciences,  is  rather  entering  upon  the  struggle 
than  emerging  from  it.  Sociology  threatens  to  with- 
draw an  immense  range  of  subjects  of  the  first  importance 
from  the  dominion  of  a  priori  speculation  and  arbitrary 
dogmatism,  and  the  struggle  will  be  severe  in  proportion 
to  the  dignity  and  importance  of  the  subject.  The 
struggle,  however,  is  best  carried  forward  indirectly,  by 
simply  defining  the  scope  of  sociology  and  by  vindicating 
its  position  amongst  the  sciences,  while  leaving  its  rela- 
tions to  the  other  sciences  and  other  pursuits  of  men  to 
adjust  themselves  according  to  the  facts.  I  know  of 
nothing  more  amusing  in  these  days  than  to  see  an 
old-fashioned  metaphysician  applying  his  tests  to  the 
results  of  scientific  investigation,  and  screaming  with  rage 
because  men  of  scientific  training  do  not  care  whether 
the  results  satisfy  those  tests  or  not. 
["Sociology  is  the  science  of  life  in  society.     It  investi- 

[1671 


168      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

gates  the  forces  which  come  into  action  wherever  a  human 
society  exists.  It  studies  the  structure  and  functions 
of  the  organs  of  human  society,  and  its  aim  is  to  find 
out  the  law^s  in  subordination  to  which  human  society 
takes  its  various  forms  and  social  institutions  grow  and 
change.  Its  practical  utility  consists  in  deriving  the  rules 
of  right  social  living  from  the  facts  and  laws  which 
prevail  by  nature  in  the  constitution  and  functions  of 
society.  It  must,  without  doubt,  come  into  collision 
with  all  other  theories  of  right  living  which  are  founded 
on  authority,  tradition,  arbitrary  invention,  or  poetic 
imagination. 

Sociology  is  perhaps  the  most  complicated  of  all  the 
sciences,  yet  there  is  no  domain  of  human  interest  the 
details  of  which  are  treated  ordinarily  with  greater 
facility.  Various  religions  have  various  theories  of  social 
living,  which  they  offer  as  authoritative  and  final.  It 
has  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  been  asserted  by  anybody 
that  a  man  of  religious  faith,  in  any  religion,  could  not 
study  sociology  or  recognize  the  existence  of  any  such 
science;  but  it  is  incontestably  plain  that  a  man  who 
accepts  the  dogmas  about  social  living  which  are  imposed 
by  the  authority  of  any  religion  must  regard  the  subject 
of  right  social  living  as  settled  and  closed,  and  he  cannot 
enter  on  any  investigation  the  first  groundwork  of  which 
would  be  doubt  of  the  authority  which  he  recognizes  as 
final.  Hence  social  problems  and  social  phenomena  pre- 
sent no  difficulty  to  him  who  has  only  to  cite  an  authority 
or  obey  a  prescription. 

Then  again  the  novelists  set  forth  "views"  about  social 
matters.  To  wTite  and  read  novels  is  perhaps  the  most 
royal  road  to  teaching  and  learning  which  has  ever  been 
devised.  The  proceeding  of  the  novelists  is  kaleido- 
scopic.    They  turn  the  same  old  bits  of  colored  glass 


SOCIOLOGY  169 

over  and  over  again  into  new  combinations.  There  is  no 
limit,  no  sequence,  no  bond  of  consistency.  The  romance- 
writing  social  philosopher  always  proves  his  case,  just  as 
a  man  always  wins  who  plays  chess  with  himself. 

Then  again  the  Utopians  and  socialists  make  easy 
work  of  the  complicated  phenomena  with  which  sociology 
has  to  deal.  These  persons,  vexed  with  the  intricacies 
of  social  problems  and  revolting  against  the  facts  of  the 
social  order,  take  upon  themselves  the  task  of  invent- 
ing a  new  and  better  world.  They  brush  away  all  which 
troubles  us  men  and  create  a  world  free  from  annoying 
limitations  and  conditions  —  in  their  imagination.  In 
ancient  times,  and  now  in  half-civilized  countries,  these 
persons  have  been  founders  of  religions.  Something  of 
that  type  always  lingers  around  them  still  and  among 
us,  and  is  to  be  seen  amongst  the  reformers  and  philan- 
thropists, who  never  contribute  much  to  the  improve- 
ment of  society  in  any  actual  detail,  but  find  a  key 
principle  for  making  the  world  anew  and  regenerating 
society.  I  have  even  seen  faint  signs  of  the  same  mys- 
ticism in  social  matters  in  some  of  the  green-backers 
who  have  "thought  out"  in  bed,  as  they  relate,  a  scheme 
of  wealth  by  paper  money,  as  Mahomet  would  have 
received  a  surah  or  Joe  Smith  a  revelation  about  polyg- 
amy. Still  there  are  limits  to  this  resemblance,  because 
in  our  nineteenth  century  American  life  a  sense  of  humor, 
even  if  defective,  answers  some  of  the  purposes  of  common 
sense. 

Then  again  all  the  whimsical  people  who  have  hobbies 
of  one  sort  or  another  come  forward  with  projects  which 
are  the  result  of  a  strong  impression,  an  individual  mis- 
fortune, or  an  unregulated  benevolent  desire,  and  which 
are  therefore  the  product  of  a  facile  emotion,  not  of  a 
laborious  investigation. 


170      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Then  again  the  dilettanti  make  Hght  work  of  social 
questions.  Everyone,  by  the  fact  of  Hving  in  society, 
gathers  some  observations  of  social  phenomena.  The 
belief  grows  up,  as  it  was  expressed  some  time  ago  by  a 
professor  of  mathematics,  that  everybody  knows  about 
the  topics  of  sociology.  Those  topics  have  a  broad  and 
generous  character.  They  lend  themselves  easily  to  gener- 
alizations. There  are  as  yet  no  sharp  tests  formulated. 
Above  all,  and  worst  lack  of  all  as  yet,  we  have  no  com- 
petent criticism.  Hence  it  is  easy  for  the  aspirant  after 
culture  to  venture  on  this  field  without  great  danger  of 
being  brought  to  account,  as  he  would  be  if  he  attempted 
geology,  or  physics,  or  biology.  Even  a  scientific  man 
of  high  attainments  in  some  other  science,  in  which  he 
well  understands  what  special  care,  skill,  and  training  are 
required,  will  not  hesitate  to  dogmatize  about  a  topic 
of  sociology.  A  group  of  half-educated  men  may  be 
relied  upon  to  attack  a  social  question  and  to  hammer 
it  dead  in  a  few  minutes  with  a  couple  of  commonplaces 
and  a  sweeping  a  priori  assumption.  Above  all  other 
topics,  social  topics  lend  themselves  to  ^the  purposes  of 
the  diner-out. 

Two  facts,  however,  in  regard  to  social  phenomena  need 
only  be  mentioned  to  be  recognized  as  true.  (1)  Social 
phenomena  always  present  themselves  to  us  in  very 
complex  combinations,  and  (2)  it  is  by  no  means  easy 
to  interpret  the  phenomena.  The  phenomena  are  often 
at  three  or  four  removes  from  their  causes.  Tradition, 
prejudice,  fashion,  habit,  and  other  similar  obstacles 
continually  warp  and  deflect  the  social  forces,  and  they 
constitute  interferences  whose  magnitude  is  to  be  ascer- 
tained separately  for  each  case.  It  is  also  impossible 
for  us  to  set  up  a  social  experiment.  To  do  that  we 
should  need  to  dispose  of  the  time  and  liberty  of  a  certain 


SOCIOLOGY  171 

number  of  men.  It  follows  that  sociology  requires  a 
special  method,  and  that  probably  no  science  requires 
such  pecuhar  skill  and  sagacity  in  the  observer  and 
interpreter  of  the  phenomena  which  are  to  be  studied. 
One  peculiarity  may  be  especially  noted  because  it  shows 
a  very  common  error  of  students  of  social  science.  A 
sociologist  needs  to  arrange  his  facts  before  he  has 
obtained  them;  that  is  to  say,  he  must  make  a  previous 
classification  so  as  to  take  up  the  facts  in  a  certain  order. 
If  he  does  not  do  this  he  may  be  overwhelmed  in  the 
mass  of  his  material  so  that  he  never  can  master  it. 
How  shall  anyone  know  how  to  classify  until  the  science 
itself  has  made  some  progress.'^  Statistics  furnish  us 
the  best  illustration  at  the  present  time  of  the  difficulty 
here  referred  to. 

When,  now,  we  take  into  account  these  difficulties 
and  requirements,  it  is  evident  that  the  task  of  sociology 
is  one  which  will  call  for  especial  and  long  training,  and 
that  it  will  probably  be  a  long  time  yet  before  we  can 
train  up  any  body  of  special  students  who  will  be  so  well 
trained  in  the  theory  and  science  of  society  as  to  be  able 
to  form  valuable  opinions  on  points  of  social  disease  and 
social  remedy.  But  it  is  a  fact  of  familiar  observation 
that  all  popular  discussions  of  social  questions  seize 
directly  upon  points  of  social  disease  and  social  remedies. 
The  diagnosis  of  some  asserted  social  ill  and  the  pre- 
scription of  the  remedy  are  undertaken  offhand  by  the 
first  comer,  and  without  reflecting  that  the  diagnosis  of  a 
social  disease  is  many  times  harder  than  that  of  a  disease 
in  an  individual,  and  that  to  prescribe  for  a  society  is  to 
prescribe  for  an  organism  which  is  immortal.  To  err  in 
prescribing  for  a  man  is  at  worst  to  kill  him;  to  err 
in  prescribing  for  a  society  is  to  set  in  operation  injurious 
forces  which  extend,  ramify,  and  multiply  their  effects 


172     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

in  ever  new  combinations  throughout  an  indefinite 
future.  It  may  pay  to  experiment  with  an  individual, 
because  he  cannot  wait  for  medical  science  to  be  perfected; 
it  cannot  pay  to  experiment  with  a  society,  because  the 
society  does  not  die  and  can  afford  to  wait. 

If  we  have  to  consider  the  need  of  sociology,  in- 
numerable reasons  for  studying  it  present  themselves. 
In  spite  of  all  our  acquisitions  in  natural  science,  the 
conception  of  a  natural  law — which  is  the  most  important 
good  to  be  won  from  studying  natural  science  —  is  yet 
exceedingly  vague  in  the  minds  of  ordinary  intelligent 
people,  and  is  very  imperfect  even  amongst  the  educated. 
That  conception  is  hardly  yet  applied  by  anybody  to 
social  facts  and  problems.  Social  questions  force  them- 
selves upon  us  in  multitudes  every  year  as  our  civiliza- 
tion advances  and  our  society  becomes  complex.  Wlien 
such  questions  arise  they  are  wrangled  over  and  tossed 
about  without  any  orderly  discussion,  but  as  if  they  were 
only  the  sport  of  arbitrary  whims.  Is  it  not  then  neces- 
sary that  we  enable  ourselves,  by  study  of  the  facts  and 
laws  of  society,  to  take  up  such  questions  from  the  correct 
point  of  view,  and  to  proceed  with  the  examination  of 
them  in  such  order  and  method  that  we  can  reach  solid 
results,  and  thus  obtain  command  of  an  increasing  mass 
of  knowledge  about  social  phenomena?  The  assumption 
which  underlies  almost  all  discussion  of  social  topics  is 
that  we  men  need  only  to  make  up  our  minds  what 
kind  of  a  society  we  want  to  have,  and  that  then  we  can 
devise  means  for  calling  that  society  into  existence.  It 
is  assumed  that  we  can  decide  to  live  on  one  spot  of  the 
earth's  surface  or  another,  and  to  pursue  there  one  in- 
dustry or  another,  and  then  that  we  can,  by  our  devices, 
make  that  industry  as  productive  as  any  other  could  be 
in  that  place.     People  believe  that  we  have  only  to  choose 


SOCIOLOGY  173 

whether  we  will  have  aristocratic  institutions  or  demo- 
cratic institutions.  It  is  believed  that  statesmen  can,  if 
they  will,  put  a  people  in  the  way  of  material  prosperity. 
It  is  believed  that  rent  on  land  can  be  abolished  if  it  is 
not  thought  expedient  to  have  it.  It  is  assumed  that 
peasant  proprietors  can  be  brought  into  existence  any- 
where where  it  is  thought  that  it  would  be  an  advantage 
to  have  them.  These  illustrations  might  be  multiplied 
indefinitely.  They  show  the  need  of  sociology,  and  if 
we  should  go  on  to  notice  the  general  conceptions  of 
society,  its  ills  and  their  remedies,  which  are  held  by 
various  religious,  political,  and  social  sects,  we  should 
find  ample  further  evidence  of  this  need. 

Let  us  then  endeavor  to  define  the  field  of  sociology. 
Life  in  society  is  the  life  of  a  human  society  on  this 
earth.  Its  elementary  conditions  are  set  by  the  nature 
of  human  beings  and  the  nature  of  the  earth.  We  have 
already  become  familiar,  in  biology,  with  the  transcen- 
dent importance  of  the  fact  that  life  on  earth  must  be 
maintained  by  a  struggle  against  nature,  and  also  by 
a  competition  with  other  forms  of  life.  In  the  latter 
fact  biology  and  sociology  touch.  |  Sociology  is  a  science 
which  deals  with  one  range  of  phenomena  produced  by 
the  struggle  for  existence,  while  biology  deals  with  an- 
other. The  forces  are  the  same,  ^-cting  on  different  fields 
and  under  different  conditions.  _The  sciences  are  truly 
cognate.  Nature  contains  certain  materials  which  are 
capable  of  satisfying  human  needs,  but  those  materials 
must,  with  rare  and  mean  exceptions,  be  won  by  labor, 
and  must  be  fitted  to  human  use  by  more  labor.  As 
soon  as  any  number  of  human  beings  are  struggling  each 
to  win  from  nature  the  material  goods  necessary  to  sup- 
port life,  and  are  carrying  on  this  struggle  side  by  side, 
certain  social  forces  come  into  operation.     The  prime 


174     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

condition  of  this  society  will  lie  in  the  ratio  of  its  numbers 
to  the  supply  of  materials  within  its  reach.  For  the 
supply  at  any  moment  attainable  is  an  exact  quantity, 
and  the  number  of  persons  who  can  be  supplied  is  arith- 
metically limited.  If  the  actual  number  present  is  very 
much  less  than  the  number  who  might  be  supported, 
the  condition  of  all  must  be  ample  and  easy.  Freedom 
and  facility  mark  all  social  relations  under  such  a  state 
of  things.  If  the  number  is  larger  than  that  which  can 
be  supplied,  the  condition  of  all  must  be  one  of  want 
and  distress,  or  else  a  few  must  be  well  provided,  the 
others  being  proportionately  still  worse  off.  Constraint, 
anxiety,  possibly  tyranny  and  repression,  mark  social 
relations.  It  is  when  the  social  pressure  due  to  an  un- 
favorable ratio  of  population  to  land  becomes  intense 
that  the  social  forces  develop  increased  activity.  Divi- 
sion of  labor,  exchange,  higher  social  organization,  emi- 
gration, advance  in  the  arts,  spring  from  the  necessity 
of  contending  against  the  harsher  conditions  of  existence 
which  are  continually  reproduced  as  the  population  sur- 
passes the  means  of  existence  on  any  given  status. 

The  society  with  which  we  have  to  deal  does  not  con- 
sist of  any  number  of  men.  An  army  is  not  a  society. 
A  man  with  his  wife  and  his  children  constitutes  a  society, 
for  its  essential  parts  are  all  present,  and  the  number 
more  or  less  is  immaterial.  A  certain  division  of  labor 
between  the  sexes  is  imposed  by  nature.  The  family 
as  a  whole  maintains  itself  better  under  an  organization 
with  division  of  labor  than  it  could  if  the  functions  were 
shared  so  far  as  possible.  From  this  germ  the  develop- 
ment of  society  goes  on  by  the  regular  steps  of  advance- 
ment to  higher  organization,  accompanied  and  sustained 
by  improvements  in  the  arts.  The  increase  of  popula- 
tion goes  on  according  to  biological  laws  which  are  capable 


SOCIOLOGY  175 

of  multiplying  the  species  beyond  any  assignable  limits, 
so  that  the  number  to  be  provided  for  steadily  advances 
and  the  status  of  ease  and  abundance  gives  way  to  a 
status  of  want  and  constraint.  Emigration  is  the  first 
and  simplest  remedy.  By  winning  more  land  the  ratio 
of  population  to  land  is  once  more  rendered  favorable. 
It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  emigration  is  painful 
to  all  men.  To  the  uncivilized  man,  to  emigrate  means  to 
abandon  a  mass  of  experiences  and  traditions  which  have 
been  won  by  suffering,  and  to  go  out  to  confront  new 
hardships  and  perils.  To  the  civilized  man  migration 
means  cutting  off  old  ties  of  kin  and  country.  The  earth 
has  been  peopled  by  man  at  the  cost  of  this  suffering. 

On  the  side  of  the  land  also  stands  the  law  of  the 
diminishing  return  as  a  limitation.  More  labor  gets 
more  from  the  land,  but  not  proportionately  more. 
Hence,  if  more  men  are  to  be  supported,  there  is  need 
not  of  a  proportionate  increase  of  labor,  but  of  a  dispro- 
portionate increase  of  labor.  The  law  of  population,  there- 
fore, combined  with  the  law  of  the  diminishing  returns, 
constitutes  the  great  underlying  condition  of  society. 
Emigration,  improvements  in  the  arts,  in  morals,  in 
education,  in  political  organization,  are  only  stages  in 
the  struggle  of  man  to  meet  these  conditions,  to  break 
their  force  for  a  time,  and  to  win  room  under  them  for 
ease  and  enlargement.  Ease  and  enlargement  mean 
either  power  to  support  more  men  on  a  given  stage  of 
comfort  or  power  to  advance  the  comfort  of  a  given 
number  of  men.  Progress  is  a  word  which  has  no  mean- 
ing save  in  view  of  the  laws  of  population  and  the  diminish- 
ing return,  and  it  is  quite  natural  that  anyone  who  fails 
to  understand  those  laws  should  fall  into  doubt  which 
way  progress  points,  whether  towards  wealth  or  poverty. 
The  laws  of  population  and  the  diminshing  return,  in 


176     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

their  combination,  are  the  iron  spur  which  has  driven 
the  race  on  to  all  which  it  has  ever  achieved,  and  the  fact 
that  population  ever  advances,  yet  advances  against  a 
barrier  which  resists  more  stubbornly  at  every  step  of 
advance,  unless  it  is  removed  to  a  new  distance  by  some 
conquest  of  man  over  nature,  is  the  guarantee  that  the 
task  of  civilization  will  never  be  ended,  but  that  the 
need  for  more  energy,  more  intelligence,  and  more  virtue 
will  never  cease  while  the  race  lasts.  If  it  were  possible 
for  an  increasing  population  to  be  sustained  by  propor- 
tionate increments  of  labor,  we  should  all  still  be  living 
in  the  original  home  of  the  race  on  the  spontaneous 
products  of  the  earth.  Let  him,  therefore,  who  desires 
to  study  social  phenomena  first  learn  the  transcendent 
importance  for  the  whole  social  organization,  industrial, 
political,  and  civil,  of  the  ratio  of  population  to  land. 

We  have  noticed  that  the  relations  involved  in  the 
struggle  for  existence  are  twofold.  There  is  first  the 
struggle  of  individuals  to  win  the  means  of  subsistence 
from  nature,  and  secondly  there  is  the  competition  of 
man  with  man  in  the  effort  to  win  a  limited  supply. 
The  radical  error  of  the  socialists  and  sentimentalists 
is  that  they  never  distinguish  these  two  relations  from 
each  other.  They  bring  forward  complaints  which  are 
really  to  be  made,  if  at  all,  against  the  author  of  the 
universe  for  the  hardships  which  man  has  to  endure  in 
his  struggle  with  nature.  The  complaints  are  addressed, 
however,  to  society;  that  is,  to  other  men  under  the  same 
hardships.  The  only  social  element,  however,  is  the 
competition  of  life,  and  when  society  is  blamed  for  the 
ills  which  belong  to  the  human  lot,  it  is  only  burdening 
those  who  have  successfully  contended  with  those  ills 
with  the  further  task  of  conquering  the  same  ills  over 
again  for  somebody  else.     Hence  liberty  perishes  in  all 


SOCIOLOGY  177 

socialistic  schemes,  and  the  tendency  of  such  schemes 
is  to  the  deterioration  of  society  by  burdening  the  good 
members  and  reheving  the  bad  ones.  The  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  was  not  made  by  man  and  cannot 
be  abrogated  by  man.  We  can  only,  by  interfering  with 
it,  produce  the  survival  of  the  unfittest.  If  a  man  comes 
forward  with  any  grievance  against  the  order  of  society 
so  far  as  this  is  shaped  by  human  agency,  he  must  have 
patient  hearing  and  full  redress;  but  if  he  addresses  a 
demand  to  society  for  relief  from  the  hardships  of  life, 
he  asks  simply  that  somebody  else  should  get  his  living 
for  him.  In  that  case  he  ought  to  be  left  to  find  out  his 
error  from  hard  experience. 

The  sentimental  philosophy  starts  from  the  first  prin- 
ciple that  nothing  is  true  which  is  disagreeable,  and  that 
we  must  not  believe  anything  which  is  "shocking,"  no 
matter  what  the  evidence  may  be.  There  are  various 
stages  of  this  philosophy.  It  touches  on  one  side  the 
intuitional  philosophy  which  proves  that  certain  things 
must  exist  by  proving  that  man  needs  them,  and  it  touches 
on  the  other  side  the  vulgar  socialism  which  affirms  that 
the  individual  has  a  right  to  whatever  he  needs,  and 
that  this  right  is  good  against  his  fellow  men.  To  this 
philosophy  in  all  its  grades  the  laws  of  population  and 
the  diminishing  return  have  always  been  very  distaste- 
ful. The  laws  which  entail  upon  mankind  an  inherit- 
ance of  labor  cannot  be  acceptable  to  any  philosophy 
which  maintains  that  man  comes  into  the  world  endowed 
with  natural  rights  and  an  inheritor  of  freedom.  It  is 
a  death-blow  to  any  intuitional  philosophy  to  find  out, 
as  an  historical  fact,  what  diverse  thoughts,  beliefs,  and 
actions  man  has  manifested,  and  it  requires  but  little 
actual  knowledge  of  human  history  to  show  that  the 
human  race  has  never  had  any  ease  which  it  did  not  earn. 


178     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

or  any  freedom  which  it  did  not  conquer.  Sociology, 
therefore,  by  the  investigations  which  it  pursues,  dispels 
illusions  about  what  society  is  or  may  be,  and  gives 
instead  knowledge  of  facts  which  are  the  basis  of  intelli- 
gent effort  by  man  to  make  the  best  of  his  circumstances 
on  earth.  Sociology,  therefore,  which  can  never  accom- 
plish anything  more  than  to  enable  us  to  make  the  best 
of  our  situation,  will  never  be  able  to  reconcile  itself  with 
those  philosophies  which  are  trying  to  find  out  how  we 
may  arrange  things  so  as  to  satisfy  any  ideal  of  society. 
The  competition  of  life  has  taken  the  form,  historically, 
of  a  struggle  for  the  possession  of  the  soil.  In  the  simpler 
states  of  society  the  possession  of  the  soil  is  tribal,  and 
the  struggles  take  place  between  groups,  producing  the 
wars  and  feuds  which  constitute  almost  the  whole  of 
early  history.  On  the  agricultural  stage  the  tribal  or 
communal  possession  of  land  exists  as  a  survival,  but 
it  gives  way  to  private  property  in  land  whenever  the 
community  advances  and  the  institutions  are  free  to 
mold  themselves.  The  agricultural  stage  breaks  up 
tribal  relations  and  encourages  individualization.  This 
is  one  of  the  reasons  why  it  is  such  an  immeasurable 
advance  over  the  lower  forms  of  civilization.  It  sets 
free  individual  energy,  and  while  the  social  bond  gains 
in  scope  and  variety,  it  also  gains  in  elasticity,  for  the 
solidarity  of  the  group  is  broken  up  and  the  individual 
may  work  out  his  own  ends  by  his  own  means,  subject 
only  to  the  social  ties  which  lie  in  the  natural  conditions 
of  human  life.  It  is  only  on  the  agricultural  stage  that 
liberty  as  civilized  men  understand  it  exists  at  all.  The 
poets  and  sentimentalists,  untaught  to  recognize  the 
grand  and  world-wide  cooperation  which  is  secured  by 
the  free  play  of  individual  energy  under  the  great  laws 
of  the  social  order,  bewail  the  decay  of  early  communal 


SOCIOLOGY  179 

relations  and  exalt  the  liberty  of  the  primitive  stages  of 
civilization.  These  notions  all  perish  at  the  first  touch 
of  actual  investigation.  The  whole  retrospect  of  human 
history  runs  downwards  towards  beast-like  misery  and 
slavery  to  the  destructive  forces  of  nature.  The  whole 
history  has  been  one  series  of  toilsome,  painful,  and 
bloody  struggles,  first  to  find  out  where  we  were  and  what 
were  the  conditions  of  greater  ease,  and  then  to  devise 
means  to  get  relief.  Most  of  the  way  the  motives  of 
advance  have  been  experience  of  suffering  and  instinct. 
It  is  only  in  the  most  recent  years  that  science  has  under- 
taken to  teach  without  and  in  advance  of  suffering,  and 
as  yet  science  has  to  fight  so  hard  against  tradition  that 
its  authority  is  only  slowly  winning  recognition.  The 
institutions  whose  growth  constitutes  the  advance  of 
civilization  have  their  guarantee  in  the  very  fact  that 
they  grew  and  became  established.  They  suited  man's 
purpose  better  than  what  went  before.  They  are  all 
imperfect,  and  all  carry  with  them  incidental  ills,  but 
each  came  to  be  because  it  was  better  than  what  went 
before,  and  each  of  which  has  perished,  perished  because  a 
better  one  supplanted  it. 

It  follows  once  and  for  all  that  to  turn  back  to  any 
defunct  institution  or  organization  because  existing  in- 
stitutions are  imperfect  is  to  turn  away  from  advance 
and  is  to  retrograde.  The  path  of  improvement  lies 
forwards.  Private  property  in  land,  for  instance,  is  an 
institution  which  has  been  developed  in  the  most  direct 
and  legitimate  manner.  It  may  give  way  at  a  future 
time  to  some  other  institution  which  will  grow  up  by 
imperceptible  stages  out  of  the  efforts  of  men  to  contend 
successfully  with  existing  evils,  but  the  grounds  for 
private  property  in  land  are  easily  perceived,  and  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  no  a  priori  scheme  of  state  ownership 


180     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

or  other  tenure  invented  en  bloc  by  any  philosopher  and 
adopted  by  legislative  act  will  ever  supplant  it.  To  talk 
of  any  such  thing  is  to  manifest  a  total  misconception  of 
the  facts  and  laws  which  it  is  the  province  of  sociology  to 
investigate.  The  case  is  less  in  magnitude  but  scarcely 
less  out  of  joint  with  all  correct  principle  when  it  is 
proposed  to  adopt  a  unique  tax  on  land,  in  a  country 
where  the  rent  of  land  is  so  low  that  any  important 
tax  on  land  exceeds  it,  and  therefore  becomes  indirect, 
and  where  also  political  power  is  in  the  hands  of  small 
landowners,  who  hold,  without  ever  having  formulated 
it,  a  doctrine  of  absolute  property  in  the  soil  such  as  is 
not  held  by  any  other  landowners  in  the  world. 

Sociology  must  exert  a  most  important  influence  on 
political  economy.  Political  economy  is  the  science 
which  investigates  the  laws  of  the  material  welfare  of 
human  societies.  It  is  not  its  province  to  teach  indi- 
viduals how  to  get  rich.  It  is  a  social  science.  It  was 
the  first  branch  of  sociology  which  was  pursued  by  man 
as  a  science.  It  is  not  strange  that  when  the  industrial 
organization  of  society  was  studied  apart  from  the  organ- 
ism of  which  it  forms  a  part  it  was  largely  dominated 
over  by  arbitrary  dogmatism,  and  that  it  should  have 
fallen  into  disrepute  as  a  mere  field  of  opinion,  and  of 
endless  wrangling  about  opinions  for  which  no  guarantees 
could  be  given.  The  rise  of  a  school  of  "historical" 
economists  is  itself  a  sign  of  a  struggle  towards  a  positive 
and  scientific  study  of  political  economy,  in  its  due  rela- 
tions to  other  social  sciences,  and  this  sign  loses  none  of 
its  significance  in  spite  of  the  crudeness  and  extravagance 
of  the  opinions  of  the  historical  economists,  and  in  spite 
of  their  very  marked  tendency  to  fall  into  dogmatism  and 
hobby-riding.  Political  economy  is  thrown  overboard 
by  all  groups  and  persons  whenever  it  becomes  trouble- 


SOCIOLOGY  181 

some.  When  it  got  in  the  way  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  land- 
bill  he  relegated  it,  by  implication,  to  the  planet  Saturn, 
to  the  great  delight  of  all  the  fair-traders,  protection- 
ists, soft-money  men,  and  others  who  had  found  it  in 
the  way  of  their  devices.  What  political  economy  needs 
in  order  to  emerge  from  the  tangle  in  which  it  is  now 
involved,  and  to  win  a  dignified  and  orderly  development, 
is  to  find  its  field  and  its  relations  to  other  sciences  fairly 
defined  within  the  wider  scope  of  sociology.  Its  laws 
will  then  take  their  place  not  as  arbitrary  or  broken  frag- 
ments, but  in  due  relation  to  other  laws.  Those  laws 
will  win  proof  and  establishment  from  this  relation. 

For  instance,  we  have  plenty  of  books,  some  of  them 
by  able  writers,  in  which  the  old-fashioned  Malthusian 
doctrine  of  population  and  the  Ricardian  law  of  rent  are 
disputed  because  emigration,  advance  in  the  arts,  etc., 
can  offset  the  action  of  those  laws  or  because  those  laws 
are  not  seen  in  action  in  the  United  States.  Obviously 
no  such  objections  ever  could  have  been  raised  if  the 
laws  in  question  had  been  understood  or  had  been  put 
in  their  proper  bearings.  The  Malthusian  law  of  popu- 
lation and  the  Ricardian  law  of  rent  are  cases  in  which 
by  rare  and  most  admirable  acumen  powerful  thinkers 
perceived  two  great  laws  in  particular  phases  of  their 
action.  With  wider  information  it  now  appears  that  the 
law  of  population  breaks  the  barriers  of  Malthus' 
narrower  formulae  and  appears  as  a  great  law  of  biology. 
The  Ricardian  law  of  rent  is  only  a  particular  application 
of  one  of  the  great  conditions  of  production.  We  have 
before  us  not  special  dogmas  of  political  economy,  but 
facts  of  the  widest  significance  for  the  whole  social  devel- 
opment of  the  race.  To  object  that  these  facts  may  be 
set  aside  by  migration  or  advance  in  the  arts  is  nothing 
to  the  purpose,  for  this  is  only  altering  the  constants  in 


182     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  equation,  which  does  not  alter  the  form  of  the  curve, 
but  only  its  position  relatively  to  some  standard  line. 
Furthermore,  the  laws  themselves  indicate  that  they  have 
a  maximum  point  for  any  society,  or  any  given  stage  of 
the  arts,  and  a  condition  of  under-population,  or  of  an 
extractive  industry  below  its  maximum,  is  just  as  con- 
sistent with  the  law  as  a  condition  of  over-population 
and  increasing  distress.  Hence  inferences  as  to  the  law 
of  population  drawn  from  the  status  of  an  under-popu- 
lated country  are  sure  to  be  fallacious.  In  like  manner 
arguments  drawn  from  American  phenomena  in  regard 
to  rent  and  wages,  when  rent  and  wages  are  as  yet  only 
very  imperfectly  developed  here,  lead  to  erroneous  con- 
clusions. It  only  illustrates  the  unsatisfactory  condition 
of  political  economy,  and  the  want  of  strong  criticism 
in  it,  that  such  arguments  can  find  admission  to  its 
discussions  and  disturb  its  growth. 

It  is  to  the  pursuit  of  sociology  and  the  study  of  the 
industrial  organization  in  combination  with  the  other 
organizations  of  society  that  we  must  look  for  the  more 
fruitful  development  of  political  economy.  We  are 
already  in  such  a  position  with  sociology  that  a  person 
who  has  gained  what  we  now  possess  of  that  science  will 
bring  to  bear  upon  economic  problems  a  sounder  judg- 
ment and  a  more  correct  conception  of  all  social  relations 
than  a  person  who  may  have  read  a  library  of  the  exist- 
ing treatises  on  political  economy.  The  essential  ele- 
ments of  political  economy  are  only  corollaries  or  special 
cases  of  sociological  principles.  One  who  has  command 
of  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy  as  it  manifests 
itself  in  society  is  armed  at  once  against  socialism,  pro- 
tectionism, paper  money,  and  a  score  of  other  economic 
fallacies.  The  sociological  view  of  political  economy 
also  includes  whatever  is  sound  in  the  dogmas  of  the 


SOCIOLOGY  183 

*' historical  school  "  and  furnishes  what  that  school  is 
apparently  groping  after. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  light  which  sociology  throws 
on  a  great  number  of  political  and  social  phenomena 
which  are  constantly  misconstrued,  we  may  notice  the 
differences  in  the  industrial,  political,  and  civil  organiza- 
tions which  are  produced  all  along  at  different  stages  of 
the  ratio  of  population  to  land. 

When  a  country  is  under-populated  newcomers  are 
not  competitors,  but  assistants.  If  more  come  they  may 
produce  not  only  new  quotas,  but  a  surplus  besides,  to 
be  divided  between  themselves  and  all  who  were  present 
before.  In  such  a  state  of  things  land  is  abundant  and 
cheap.  The  possession  of  it  confers  no  power  or  privi- 
lege. No  one  will  work  for  another  for  wages  when  he 
can  take  up  new  land  and  be  his  own  master.  Hence 
it  will  pay  no  one  to  own  more  land  than  he  can  culti- 
vate by  his  own  labor,  or  with  such  aid  as  his  own  family 
supplies.  Hence,  again,  land  bears  little  or  no  rent; 
there  will  be  no  landlords  living  on  rent  and  no  laborers 
living  on  wages,  but  only  a  middle  class  of  yeoman  farmers. 
All  are  substantially  on  an  equality,  and  democracy 
becomes  the  political  form,  because  this  is  the  only  state 
of  society  in  which  the  dogmatic  assumption  of  equality, 
on  which  democracy  is  based,  is  realized  as  a  fact.  The 
same  effects  are  powerfully  reenforced  by  other  facts.  In 
a  new  and  under-populated  country  the  industries  which 
are  most  profitable  are  the  extractive  industries.  The 
characteristic  of  these,  with  the  exception  of  some  kinds 
of  mining,  is  that  they  call  for  only  a  low  organization 
of  labor  and  small  amount  of  capital.  Hence  they  allow 
the  workman  to  become  speedily  his  own  master,  and  they 
educate  him  to  freedom,  independence,  and  self-reliance. 
At  the  same  time,  the  social  groups  being  only  vaguely 


184     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

marked  off  from  each  other,  it  is  easy  to  pass  from  one 
class  of  occupations,  and  consequently  from  one  social 
grade,  to  another.  Finally,  under  the  same  circum- 
stances education,  skill,  and  superior  training  have  but 
inferior  value  compared  with  what  they  have  in  densely 
populated  countries.  The  advantages  lie,  in  an  under- 
populated country,  with  the  coarser,  unskilled,  manual 
occupations,  and  not  with  the  highest  developments  of 
science,  literature,  and  art. 

If  now  we  turn  for  comparison  to  cases  of  over- 
population we  see  that  the  struggle  for  existence  and 
the  competition  of  life  are  intense  where  the  pressure  of 
population  is  great.  This  competition  draws  out  the 
highest  achievements.  It  makes  the  advantages  of  capi- 
tal, education,  talent,  skill,  and  training  tell  to  the  utmost. 
It  draws  out  the  social  scale  upwards  and  downwards 
to  great  extremes  and  produces  aristocratic  social  organ- 
izations in  spite  of  all  dogmas  of  equality.  Landlords, 
tenants  {i.e.,  capitalist  employers),  and  laborers  are  the 
three  primary  divisions  of  any  aristocratic  order,  and 
they  are  sure  to  be  developed  whenever  land  bears  rent 
and  whenever  tillage  requires  the  application  of  large 
capital.  At  the  same  time  liberty  has  to  undergo  cur- 
tailment. A  man  who  has  a  square  mile  to  himself  can 
easily  do  as  he  likes,  but  a  man  who  walks  Broadway  at 
noon  or  lives  in  a  tenement-house  finds  his  power  to  do 
as  he  likes  limited  by  scores  of  considerations  for  the  rights 
and  feelings  of  his  fellowmen.  Furthermore,  organiza- 
tion with  subordination  and  discipline  is  essential  in  order 
that  the  society  as  a  whole  may  win  a  support  from  the 
land.  In  an  over-populated  country  the  extremes  of 
wealth  and  luxury  are  presented  side  by  side  with  the 
extremes  of  poverty  and  distress.  They  are  equally  the 
products   of   an   intense   social   pressure.     The   achieve- 


SOCIOLOGY  185 

ments  of  power  are  highest,  the  rewards  of  prudence, 
energy,  enterprise,  foresight,  sagacity,  and  all  other 
industrial  virtues  is  greatest;  on  the  other  hand,  the 
penalties  of  folly,  weakness,  error,  and  vice  are  most 
terrible.  Pauperism,  prostitution,  and  crime  are  the 
attendants  of  a  state  of  society  in  which  science,  art, 
and  literature  reach  their  highest  developments.  Now 
it  is  evident  that  over-population  and  under-population 
are  only  relative  terms.  Hence  as  time  goes  on  any 
under-populated  nation  is  surely  moving  forward  towards 
the  other  status,  and  is  speedily  losing  its  natural  ad- 
vantages which  are  absolute,  and  also  that  relative 
advantage  which  belongs  to  it  if  it  is  in  neighborly  rela- 
tions with  nations  of  dense  population  and  high  civiliza- 
tion; viz.,  the  chance  to  borrow  and  assimilate  from  them 
the  products,  in  arts  and  science,  of  high  civilization 
without  enduring  the  penalties  of  intense  social  pressure. 
We  have  seen  that  if  we  should  try  by  any  measures 
of  arbitrary  interference  and  assistance  to  relieve  the 
victims  of  social  pressure  from  the  calamity  of  their 
position  we  should  only  offer  premiums  to  folly  and  vice 
and  extend  them  further.  We  have  also  seen  that  we 
must  go  forward  and  meet  our  problems.  We  cannot 
escape  them  by  running  away.  If  then  it  be  asked  what 
the  wit  and  effort  of  man  can  do  to  struggle  with  the 
problems  offered  by  social  pressure,  the  answer  is  that 
he  can  do  only  what  his  instinct  has  correctly  and  surely 
led  him  to  do  without  any  artificial  social  organization 
of  any  kind,  and  that  is,  by  improvements  in  the  arts, 
in  science,  in  morals,  in  political  institutions,  to  widen 
and  strengthen  the  power  of  man  over  nature.  The  task 
of  dealing  with  social  ills  is  not  a  new  task.  People  set 
about  it  and  discuss  it  as  if  the  human  race  had  hitherto 
neglected  it,  and  as  if  the  solution  of  the  problem  was  to 


186     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

be  something  new  in  form  and  substance,  different  from 
the  solution  of  all  problems  which  have  hitherto  engaged 
human  effort.  In  truth,  the  human  race  has  never  done 
anything  else  but  struggle  with  the  problem  of  social 
welfare.  That  struggle  constitutes  history,  or  the  life 
of  the  human  race  on  earth.  That  struggle  embraces 
all  minor  problems  which  occupy  attention  here,  save 
those  of  religion,  which  reaches  beyond  this  world  and 
finds  its  objects  beyond  this  life.  Every  successful  effort 
to  widen  the  power  of  man  overmature  is  a  real  victory 
over  poverty,  vice,  and  misery,  taking  things  in  general 
and  in  the  long  run.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  single 
instance  of  a  direct  assault  by  positive  effort  upon  poverty, 
vice,  and  misery  which  has  not  either  failed  or,  if  it  has 
not  failed  directly  and  entirely,  has  not  entailed  other 
evils  greater  than  the  one  which  it  removed.  The  only 
two  things  which  really  tell  on  the  welfare  of  man  on 
earth  are  hard  work  and  self-denial  (in  technical  language, 
labor  and  capital),  and  these  tell  most  when  they  are 
brought  to  bear  directly  upon  the  effort  to  earn  an  honest 
living,  to  accumulate  capital,  and  to  bring  up  a  family 
of  children  to  be  industrious  and  self-denying  in  their 
turn.  I  repeat  that  this  is  the  way  to  work  for  the  wel- 
fare of  man  on  earth;  and  what  I  mean  to  say  is  that  the 
common  notion  that  when  we  are  going  to  work  for  the 
social  welfare  of  man  we  must  adopt  a  great  dogma, 
organize  for  the  realization  of  some  great  scheme,  have 
before  us  an  abstract  ideal,  or  otherwise  do  anything  but 
live  honest  and  industrious  lives,  is  a  great  mistake. 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  sociologist  pessimism  and 
optimism  are  alike  impertinent.  To  be  an  optimist  one 
must  forget  the  frightful  sanctions  which  are  attached 
to  the  laws  of  right  living.  To  be  a  pessimist  one  must 
overlook  the  education  and  growth  which  are  the  product 


SOCIOLOGY  187 

of  effort  and  self-denial.  In  either  case  one  is  passing 
judgment  on  what  is  inevitably  fixed,  and  on  which  the 
approval  or  condemnation  of  man  can  produce  no  effect. 
The  facts  and  laws  are,  once  and  for  all,  so,  and  for  us 
men  that  is  the  end  of  the  matter.  The  only  persons 
for  whom  there  would  be  any  sense  in  the  question 
whether  life  is  worth  living  are  primarily  the  yet  unborn 
children,  and  secondarily  the  persons  who  are  proposing 
to  found  families.  For  these  latter  the  question  would 
take  a  somewhat  modified  form :  Will  life  be  worth  living 
for  children  born  of  me.^  This  question  is,  unfortunately, 
not  put  to  themselves  by  the  appropriate  persons  as  it 
would  be  if  they  had  been  taught  sociology.  The  sociol- 
ogist is  often  asked  if  he  wants  to  kill  off  certain  classes 
of  troublesome  and  burdensome  persons.  No  such  in- 
ference follows  from  any  sound  sociological  doctrine,  but 
it  is  allowed  to  infer,  as  to  a  great  many  persons  and 
classes,  that  it  would  have  been  better  for  society,  and 
would  have  involved  no  pain  to  them,  if  they  had  never 
been  born. 

In  further  illustration  of  the  interpretation  which 
sociology  offers  of  phenomena  which  are  often  obscure, 
we  may  note  the  world-wide  effects  of  the  advances  in 
the  arts  and  sciences  which  have  been  made  during  the 
last  hundred  years.  These  improvements  have  especially 
affected  transportation  and  communication;  that  is,  they 
have  lessened  the  obstacles  of  time  and  space  which 
separate  the  groups  of  mankind  from  each  other  and  have 
tended  to  make  the  whole  human  race  a  single  unit. 
The  distinction  between  over-populated  and  under- 
populated countries  loses  its  sharpness,  and  all  are  brought 
to  an  average.  Every  person  who  migrates  from  Europe 
to  America  affects  the  comparative  status  of  the  two 
continents.     He  lessens  the  pressure  in  the  country  he 


188      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

leaves  and  increases  it  in  the  country  to  which  he  goes. 
If  he  goes  to  Minnesota  and  raises  wheat  there,  which  is 
carried  back  to  the  country  he  left  as  cheap  food  for  those 
who  have  not  emigrated,  it  is  evident  that  the  bearing 
upon  social  pressure  is  twofold.  It  is  evident,  also, 
that  the  problem  of  social  pressure  can  no  longer  be 
correctly  studied  if  the  view  is  confined  either  to  the 
country  of  immigration  or  the  country  of  emigration, 
but  that  it  must  embrace  both.  It  is  easy  to  see,  there- 
fore, that  the  ratio  of  population  to  land  with  which  we 
have  to  deal  is  only  in  peculiar  and  limited  cases  that 
ratio  as  it  exists  in  England,  Germany,  or  the  United 
States.  It  is  the  ratio  as  it  exists  in  the  civilized  world, 
and  every  year  that  passes,  as  our  improved  arts  break 
down  the  barriers  between  different  parts  of  the  earth, 
brings  us  nearer  to  the  state  of  things  where  all  the 
population  of  Europe,  America,  Australasia,  and  South 
Africa  must  be  considered  in  relation  to  all  the  land  of 
the  same  territories,  for  all  that  territory  will  be  available 
for  all  that  population,  no  matter  what  the  proportion 
may  be  in  which  the  population  is  distributed  over  the 
various  portions  of  the  territory.  The  British  Islands 
may  become  one  great  manufacturing  city.  Minnesota, 
Texas,  and  Australia  may  not  have  five  persons  to  the 
square  mile.  Yet  all  will  eat  the  meat  of  Texas  and  the 
wheat  of  Minnesota  and  wear  the  wool  of  Australia 
manufactured  on  the  looms  of  England.  That  all  will 
enjoy  the  maximum  of  food  and  raiment  under  that 
state  of  things  is  as  clear  as  anything  possibly  can  be 
which  is  not  yet  an  accomplished  fact.  We  are  working 
towards  it  by  all  our  instincts  of  profit  and  improve- 
ment. The  greatest  obstacles  are  those  which  come 
from  prejudices,  traditions,  and  dogmas,  which  are  held 
independently  of  any  observation  of  facts  or  any  correct 


SOCIOLOGY  189 

reasoning,  and  which  set  the  right  hand  working  against 
the  left.  For  instance,  the  Mississippi  Valley  was,  a 
century  ago,  as  unavailable  to  support  the  population 
of  France  and  Germany  as  if  it  had  been  in  the  moon. 
The  Mississippi  Valley  is  now  nearer  to  France  and 
Germany  than  the  British  Islands  were  a  century  ago, 
reckoning  distance  by  the  only  true  standard;  viz.y  diffi- 
culty of  communication.  It  is  a  fair  way  of  stating  it 
to  say  that  the  improvements  in  transportation  of  the 
last  fifty  years  have  added  to  France  and  Germany 
respectively  a  tract  of  land  of  the  very  highest  fertility, 
equal  in  area  to  the  territory  of  those  states,  and  available 
for  the  support  of  their  population.  The  public  men  of 
those  countries  are  now  declaring  that  this  is  a  calamity, 
and  are  devising  means  to  counteract  it. 

The  social  and  political  effects  of  the  improvements 
which  have  been  made  must  be  very  great.  It  follows 
from  what  we  have  said  about  the  effects  of  intense  social 
pressure  and  high  competition  that  the  effect  of  thus 
bringing  to  bear  on  the  great  centers  of  population  the 
new  land  of  outlying  countries  must  be  to  relieve  the 
pressure  in  the  oldest  countries  and  at  the  densest  centers. 
Then  the  extremes  of  wealth  and  poverty,  culture  and 
brutality,  will  be  contracted  and  there  will  follow  a 
general  tendency  towards  an  average  equality  which, 
however,  must  be  understood  only  within  very  broad 
limits.  Such  is  no  doubt  the  meaning  of  the  general 
tendency  towards  equality,  the  decline  of  aristocratic 
institutions,  the  rise  of  the  proletariat,  and  the  ambitious 
expansion,  in  short,  which  is  characteristic  of  modern 
civilized  society.  It  would  lead  me  too  far  to  follow 
out  this  line  of  speculation  as  to  the  future,  but  two 
things  ought  to  be  noticed  in  passing.  (1)  There  are 
important  offsets  to  the  brilliant  promise  which  there 


190     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

is  for  mankind  in  a  period  during  which,  for  the  whole 
civilized  world,  there  will  be  a  wide  margin  of  ease  be- 
tween the  existing  population  and  the  supporting  power 
of  the  available  land.  These  offsets  consist  in  the 
effects  of  ignorance,  error,  and  folly  —  the  same  forces 
which  have  always  robbed  mankind  of  half  what  they 
might  have  enjoyed  on  earth.  Extravagant  governments, 
abuses  of  public  credit,  wasteful  taxation,  legislative 
monopolies  and  special  privileges,  juggling  with  cur- 
rency, restrictions  on  trade,  wasteful  armaments  on  land 
and  sea,  and  other  follies  in  economy  and  statecraft, 
are  capable  of  wasting  and  nullifying  all  the  gains  of 
civilization.  (2)  The  old  classical  civilization  fell  under 
an  irruption  of  barbarians  from  without.  It  is  possible 
that  our  new  civilization  may  perish  by  an  explosion 
from  within.  The  sentimentalists  have  been  preaching 
for  a  century  notions  of  rights  and  equality,  of  the  dig- 
nity, wisdom,  and  power  of  the  proletariat,  w^hich  have 
filled  the  minds  of  ignorant  men  with  impossible  dreams. 
The  thirst  for  luxurious  enjoyment  has  taken  possession 
of  us  all.  It  is  the  dark  side  of  the  power  to  foresee  a 
possible  future  good  with  such  distinctness  as  to  make 
it  a  motive  of  energy  and  persevering  industry  —  a  power 
which  is  distinctly  modern.  Now  the  thirst  for  luxurious 
enjoyment,  when  brought  into  connection  with  the  notions 
of  rights,  of  power,  and  of  equality,  and  dissociated  from 
the  notions  of  industry  and  economy,  produces  the  notion 
that  a  man  is  robbed  of  his  rights  if  he  has  not  every- 
thing that  he  wants,  and  that  he  is  deprived  of  equality 
if  he  sees  anyone  have  more  than  he  has,  and  that  he  is  a 
fool  if,  having  the  power  of  the  State  in  his  hands,  he  allows 
this  state  of  things  to  last.  Then  we  have  socialism,  com- 
munism, and  nihilism ;  and  the  fairest  conquests  of  civili- 
zation, with  all  their  promise  of  solid  good  to  man,  on  the 


SOCIOLOGY  191 

sole  conditions  of  virtue  and  wisdom,  may  be  scattered  to 
the  winds  in  a  war  of  classes,  or  trampled  underfoot  by  a 
mob  which  can  only  hate  what  it  cannot  enjoy. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  sociology  is  yet  in  a  tentative 
and  inchoate  state.  All  that  we  can  affirm  with  certainty 
is  that  social  phenomena  are  subject  to  law,  and  that  the 
natural  laws  of  the  social  order  are  in  their  entire  character 
like  the  laws  of  physics.  We  can  draw  in  grand  outline 
the  field  of  sociology  and  foresee  the  shape  that  it  will 
take  and  the  relations  it  will  bear  to  other  sciences. 
We  can  also  already  find  the  standpoint  which  it  will 
occupy,  and,  if  a  figure  may  be  allowed,  although  we 
still  look  over  a  wide  landscape  largely  enveloped  in  mist, 
we  can  see  where  the  mist  lies  and  define  the  general 
features  of  the  landscape,  subject  to  further  corrections. 
To  deride  or  contemn  a  science  in  this  state  would  cer- 
tainly be  a  most  unscientific  proceeding.  We  confess, 
however,  that  so  soon  as  we  go  beyond  the  broadest 
principles  of  the  science  we  have  not  yet  succeeded  in 
discovering  social  laws,  so  as  to  be  able  to  formulate 
them.  A  great  amount  of  labor  yet  remains  to  be  done 
in  the  stages  of  preparation.  There  are,  however,  not 
more  than  two  or  three  other  sciences  which  are  making 
as  rapid  progress  as  sociology,  and  there  is  no  other  which 
is  as  full  of  promise  for  the  welfare  of  man.  That  sociology 
has  an  immense  department  of  human  interests  to  con- 
trol is  beyond  dispute.  Hitherto  this  department  has 
been  included  in  moral  science,  and  it  has  not  only  been 
confused  and  entangled  by  dogmas  no  two  of  which  are 
consistent  with  each  other,  but  also  it  has  been  without 
any  growth,  so  that  at  this  moment  our  knowledge  of 
social  science  is  behind  the  demands  which  existing  social 
questions  make  upon  us.  We  are  face  to  face  with  an 
issue  no  less  grand  than  this:    Shall  we,  in  our  general 


192     ESSAYS  OF  ^YILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMXER 

social  policy,  pursue  the  effort  to  realize  more  completely 
that  constitutional  liberty  for  which  we  have  been  strug- 
gling throughout  modern  history,  or  shall  we  return  to 
the  mediaeval  device  of  functionaries  to  regulate  pro- 
cedure and  to  adjust  interests?  Shall  we  try  to  connect 
w^ith  liberty  an  equal  and  appropriate  responsibihty  as 
its  essential  complement  and  corrective,  so  that  a  man 
who  gets  his  own  way  shall  accept  his  own  consequences, 
or  shall  we  yield  to  the  sentimentalism  which,  after 
preaching  an  unlimited  liberty,  robs  those  who  have  been 
wise  out  of  pity  for  those  who  have  been  foolish?  Shall 
we  accept  the  inequalities  which  follow  upon  free  com- 
petition as  the  definition  of  justice,  or  shall  we  suppress 
free  competition  in  the  interest  of  equality  and  to  satisfy 
a  baseless  dogma  of  justice?  Shall  we  try  to  solve  the 
social  entanglements  which  arise  in  a  society  where  social 
ties  are  constantly  becoming  more  numerous  and  more 
subtle,  and  where  contract  has  only  partly  superseded 
custom  and  status,  by  returning  to  the  latter,  only  hasten- 
ing a  more  complete  development  of  the  former?  These 
certainly  are  practical  questions,  and  their  scope  is 
such  that  they  embrace  a  great  number  of  minor  ques- 
tions which  are  before  us  and  which  are  coming  up. 
It  is  to  the  science  of  society,  which  will  derive  true  con- 
ceptions of  society  from  the  facts  and  laws  of  the  social 
order, ^  studied  without  prejudice  or  bias  of  any  sort,  that 
we  must  look  for  the  correct  answer  to  these  questions. 
By  this  observation  the  field  of  sociology  and  the  work 
which  it  is  to  do  for  society  are  suflSciently  defined. 

1  It  has  been  objected  that  no  proof  is  offered  that  social  laws  exist  in  the 
order  of  nature.  By  what  demonstration  could  any  such  proof  be  given  a 
priori?  If  a  man  of  scientific  training  finds  his  attention  arrested,  in  some 
group  of  phenomena,  by  these  sequences,  relations,  and  recurrences  which  he 
has  learned  to  note  as  signs  of  action  of  law,  he  seeks  to  discover  the  law. 
If  it  exists,  he  finds  it.      'NMiat  other  proof  of  its  existences  could  there  be  ? 


THE  ABSURD  EFFORT  TO  MAKE  THE 
WORLD  OVER 


VIII 

THE  ABSURD  EFFORT  TO  MAKE  THE 
WORLD  OVER 

[ 1894  ] 

TT  will  not  probably  be  denied  that  the  burden  of  proof 
^  is  on  those  who  affirm  that  our  social  condition  is 
utterly  diseased  and  in  need  of  radical  regeneration.  My 
task  at  present,  therefore,  is  entirely  negative  and  crit- 
ical: to  examine  the  allegations  of  fact  and  the  doctrines 
which  are  put  forward  to  prove  the  correctness  of  the 
diagnosis  and  to  warrant  the  use  of  the  remedies  proposed. 
The  propositions  put  forward  by  social  reformers  now- 
adays are  chiefly  of  two  kinds.  There  are  assertions  in 
historical  form,  chiefly  in  regard  to  the  comparison  of 
existing  with  earlier  social  states,  which  are  plainly  based 
on  defective  historical  knowledge,  or  at  most  on  current 
stock  historical  dicta  which  are  uncritical  and  incorrect. 
Writers  very  often  assert  that  something  never  existed 
before  because  they  do  not  know  that  it  ever  existed 
before,  or  that  something  is  worse  than  ever  before  be- 
cause they  are  not  possessed  of  detailed  information  about 
what  has  existed  before.  The  other  class  of  propositions! 
consists  of  dogmatic  statements  which,  whether  true  orl 
not,  are  unverifiable.  This  class  of  propositions  is  th^ 
pest  and  bane  of  current  economic  and  social  discussion. 
Upon  a  more  or  less  superficial  view  of  some  phenomenon 
a  suggestion  arises  which  is  embodied  in  a  philosophical 
proposition  and  promulgated  as  a  truth.  From  the  form 
and   nature   of   such   propositions   they   can   always   be 

[195] 


196     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

brought  under  the  head  of  "ethics."  This  word  at  least 
gives  them  an  air  of  elevated  sentiment  and  purpose, 
which  is  the  only  warrant  they  possess.  It  is  impossible 
to  test  or  verify  them  by  any  investigation  or  logical 
process  whatsoever.  It  is  therefore  very  difficult  for  any- 
one who  feels  a  high  responsibility  for  historical  state- 
ments, and  who  absolutely  rejects  any  statement  which 
is  unverifiable,  to  find  a  common  platform  for  discussion 
or  to  join  issue  satisfactorily  in  taking  the  negative. 

When  anyone  asserts  that  the  class  of  skilled  and 
unskilled  manual  laborers  of  the  United  States  is  worse 
off  now  in  respect  to  diet,  clothing,  lodgings,  furniture, 
fuel,  and  lights;  in  respect  to  the  age  at  which  they  can 
marry;  the  number  of  children  they  can  provide  for; 
the  start  in  life  which  they  can  give  to  their  children, 
and  their  chances  of  accumulating  capital,  than  they 
ever  have  been  at  any  former  time,  he  makes  a  reckless 
assertion  for  which  no  facts  have  been  offered  in  proof. 
Upon  an  appeal  to  facts,  the  contrary  of  this  assertion 
would  be  clearly  established.  It  suffices,  therefore,  to 
challenge  those  who  are  responsible  for  the  assertion  to 
make  it  good. 

If  it  is  said  that  the  employed  class  are  under  much 
more  stringent  discipline  than  they  were  thirty  years  ago 
or  earlier,  it  is  true.  It  is  not  true  that  there  has  been 
any  qualitative  change  in  this  respect  within  thirty  years, 
but  it  is  true  that  a  movement  which  began  at  the  first 
settlement  of  the  country  has  been  advancing  with  con- 
stant acceleration  and  has  become  a  noticeable  feature 
within  our  time.  This  movement  is  the  advance  in  the 
industrial  organization.  The  first  settlement  was  made 
by  agriculturists,  and  for  a  long  time  there  was  scarcely 
any  organization.  There  were  scattered  farmers,  each 
working  for  himself,  and  some  small  towns  with  only 


ABSURD   EFFORT  197 

rudimentary  commerce  and  handicrafts.     As  the  country 
has  filled  up,  the  arts  and  professions  have  been  differen- 
tiated and  the  industrial  organization  has  been  advancing.  -- 
This  fact  and  its  significance  has  hardly  been  noticed  at 
all;  but  the  stage  of  the  industrial  organization  existing  ^ 
at  any  time,  and  the  rate  of  advance  in  its  development, 
are  the  absolutely  controlling  social  facts.     Nine-tenths  -• 
of  the  socialistic  and  semi-socialistic,  and  sentimental  or   \ 
ethical,  suggestions  by  which  we  are  overwhelmed  come 
from  failure  to  understand  the  phenomena  of  the  indus- 
trial organization  and  its  expansion.     It  controls  us  all 
because  we  are  all  in  it.     It  creates  the  conditions  of 
our  existence,  sets  the  limits  of  our  social  activity,  regu- 
lates the  bonds  of  our  social  relations,  determines  our 
conceptions  of  good  and  evil,  suggests  our  life-philosophy, 
molds  our  inherited  political  institutions,   and  reforms 
the  oldest  and  toughest  customs,  like  marriage  and  prop- 
erty.    I  repeat  that  the  turmoil  of  heterogeneous  and  -] 
antagonistic  social  whims  and  speculations  in  which  we 
live  is  due  to  the  failure  to  understand  what  the  indus- 
trial organization  is  and  its  all-pervading  control  over 
human  life,  while  the  traditions  of  our  school  of  philosophy 
lead  us  always  to  approach  the  industrial  organization,  , 
not  from  the  side  of  objective  study,  but  from  that  of  ^\ 
philosophical  doctrine.     Hence  it  is  that  we  find  that  the 
method  of  measuring  what  we  see  happening  by  what  are 
called  ethical  standards,  and  of  proposing  to  attack  the 
phenomena  by  methods  thence  deduced,  is  so  popular. 

The  advance  of  a  new  country  from  the  very  simplest 
social  coordination  up  to  the  highest  organization  is  a 
most  interesting  and  instructive  chance  to  study  the 
development  of  the  organization.  It  has  of  course  been 
attended  all  the  way  along  by  stricter  subordination  and 
higher  discipline.     All  organization  implies  restriction  of 


198     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

liberty.  The  gain  of  power  is  won  by  narrowing  indi- 
vidual range.  The  methods  of  business  in  colonial  days 
were  loose  and  slack  to  an  inconceivable  degree.  The 
movement  of  industry  has  been  all  the  time  toward 
'promptitude,  punctuality,  and  reliability.  It  has  been 
attended  all  the  way  by  lamentations  about  the  good  old 
times;  about  the  decline  of  small  industries;  about  the 
lost  spirit  of  comradeship  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee; about  the  narrowing  of  the  interests  of  the  work- 
man; about  his  conversion  into  a  machine  or  into  a 
"ware,"  and  about  industrial  w^ar.  These  lamentations 
have  all  had  reference  to  unquestionable  phenomena 
attendant  on  advancing  organization.  In  all  occupations 
the  same  movement  is  discernible — in  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, in  schools,  in  trade,  commerce,  and  transporta- 
tion. It  is  to  go  on  faster  than  ever,  now  that  the 
continent  is  filled  up  by  the  first  superficial  layer  of 
population  over  its  whole  extent  and  the  intensification 

i.  of  industry  has  begun.  The  great  inventions  both  make 
the  intension  of  the  organization  possible   and  make  it 

'  inevitable,  with  all  its  consequences,  whatever  they  may 
be.  I  must  expect  to  be  told  here,  according  to  the 
current  fashions  of  thinking,  that  we  ought  to  control 
the  development  of  the  organization.  The  first  instinct 
of  the  modern  man  is  to  get  a  law  passed  to  forbid  or 
prevent  what,  in  his  wisdom,  he  disapproves.  A  thing 
which  is  inevitable,  however,  is  one  which  we  cannot 
/  control.  We  have  to  make  up  our  minds  to  it,  adjust 
ourselves  to  it,  and  sit  down  to  live  with  it.  Its  inevi- 
tableness  may  be  disputed,  in  which  case  we  must  re- 
examine it;  but  if  our  analysis  is  correct,  when  we  reach 
what  is  inevitable  we  reach  the  end,  and  our  regulations 
must  apply  to  ourselves,  not  to  the  social  facts. 

^       Now  the  intensification  of  the  social  organization  is 


ABSURD   EFFORT  199 

what  gives  us  greater  social  power.  It  is  to  it  that  we 
owe  our  increased  comfort  and  abundance.  We  are  none 
of  us  ready  to  sacrifice  this.  On  the  contrary,  we  want 
more  of  it.  We  would  not  return  to  the  colonial  sim- 
plicity and  the  colonial  exiguity  if  we  could.  If  not, 
then  we  must  pay  the  price.  Our  life  is  bounded  on 
every  side  by  conditions.  We  can  have  this  if  we  will 
agree  to  submit  to  that.  In  the  case  of  industrial  power 
and  product  the  great  condition  is  combination  of  force 
under  discipline  and  strict  coordination.  Hence  the  wild 
language  about  wage-slavery  and  capitalistic  tyranny. 

In  any  state  of  society  no  great  achievements  can  be 
produced  without  great  force.  Formerly  great  force  was 
attainable  only  by  slavery  aggregating  the  power  of  great 
numbers  of  men.  Roman  civilization  was  built  on  this. 
Ours  has  been  built  on  steam.  It  is  to  be  built  on  elec::^ 
tricity.  Then  we  are  all  forced  into  an  organization 
around  these  natural  forces  and  adapted  to  the  methods 
or  their  application;  and  although  we  indulge  in  rhetoric 
about  political  liberty,  nevertheless  we  find  ourselves 
bound  tight  in  a  new  set  of  conditions,  which  control  the 
modes  of  our  existence  and  determine  the  directions  in 
which  alone  economic  and  social  liberty  can  go. 

If  it  is  said  that  there  are  some  persons  in  our  time  who 
have  become  rapidly  and  in  a  great  degree  rich,  it  is 
true;  if  it  is  said  that  large  aggregations  of  wealth  in 
the  control  of  individuals  is  a  social  danger,  it  is  not 
true. 

The  movement  of  the  industrial  organization  which 
has  just  been  described  has  brought  out  a  great  demand 
for  men  capable  of  managing  great  enterprises.  Such 
have  been  called  "captains  of  industry."  The  analogy 
with  military  leaders  suggested  by  this  name  is  not  mis- 
leading.    The  great  leaders  in  the  development  of  the 


200     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

industrial  organization  need  those  talents  of  executive 
and  administrative  skill,  power  to  command,  courage, 
and  fortitude,  which  were  formerly  called  for  in  mihtary 
affairs  and  scarcely  anywhere  else.  The  industrial  army 
is  also  as  dependent  on  its  captains  as  a  military  body  is 
on  its  generals.  One  of  the  worst  features  of  the  existing 
system  is  that  the  employees  have  a  constant  risk  in 
their  employer.  If  he  is  not  competent  to  manage  the 
business  with  success,  they  suffer  wuth  him.  Capital 
also  is  dependent  on  the  skill  of  the  captain  of  industry 
for  the  certainty  and  magnitude  of  its  profits.  Under 
these  circumstances  there  has  been  a  great  demand  for 
men  having  the  requisite  ability  for  this  function.  As 
the  organization  has  advanced,  with  more  impersonal 
bonds  of  coherence  and  wider  scope  of  operations,  the 
value  of  this  functionary  has  rapidly  increased.  The 
possession  of  the  requisite  ability  is  a  natural  monopoly. 
Consequently,  all  the  conditions  have  concurred  to  give 
to  those  who  possessed  this  monopoly  excessive  and 
constantly  advancing  rates  of  remuneration. 

Another  social  function  of  the  first  importance  in  an 
intense  organization  is  the  solution  of  those  crises  in  the 
operation  of  it  which  are  called  the  conjuncture  of  the 
market.  It  is  through  the  market  that  the  lines  of  rela- 
tion run  which  preserve  the  system  in  harmonious  and 
rhythmical  operation.  The  conjuncture  is  the  momen- 
tary sharper  misadjustment  of  supply  and  demand  which 
indicates  that  a  redistribution  of  productive  effort  is 
called  for.  The  industrial  organization  needs  to  be 
insured  against  these  conjunctures,  which,  if  neglected, 
produce  a  crisis  and  catastrophe;  and  it  needs  that  they 
shall  be  anticipated  and  guarded  against  as  far  as  skill 
and  foresight  can  do  it.  The  rewards  of  this  function 
for  the  bankers  and  capitalists  w^ho  perform  it  are  very 


ABSURD   EFFORT  201 

great.  The  captains  of  industry  and  the  capitaHsts  who 
operate  on  the  conjuncture,  therefore,  if  they  are  suc- 
sessful,  win,  in  these  days,  great  fortunes  in  a  short  time. 
There  are  no  earnings  which  are  more  legitimate  or  for 
which  greater  services  are  rendered  to  the  whole  indus- 
trial body.  The  popular  notions  about  this  matter  really 
assume  that  all  the  wealth  accumulated  by  these  classes 
of  persons  would  be  here  just  the  same  if  they  had  not 
existed.  They  are  supposed  to  have  appropriated  it  out 
of  the  common  stock.  This  is  so  far  from  being  true  that, 
on  the  contrary,  their  own  wealth  would  not  be  but  for 
themselves;  and  besides  that,  millions  more  of  wealth,  ^ 
many-fold  greater  than  their  own,  scattered  in  the  hands 
of  thousands,  would  not  exist  but  for  them. 

Within  the  last  two  years  I  have  traveled  from  end  to 
end  of  the  German  Empire  several  times  on  all  kinds  of 
trains.  I  reached  the  conviction,  looking  at  the  matter 
from  the  passenger's  standpoint,  that,  if  the  Germans  ^i^'' 
could  find  a  Vanderbilt  and  put  their  railroads  in  his 
hands  for  twenty-five  years,  letting  him  reorganize  the 
system  and  make  twenty-five  million  dollars  out  of  it 
for  himself  in  that  period,  they  would  make  an  excellent 
bargain. 

But  it  is  repeated  until  it  has  become  a  commonplace 
which  people  are  afraid  to  question,  that  there  is  some 
social  danger  in  the  possession  of  large  amounts  of  wealth 
by  individuals.  I  ask,  Why?  I  heard  a  lecture  two 
years  ago  by  a  man  who  holds  perhaps  the  first  chair  of 
political  economy  in  the  world.  He  said,  among  other 
things,  that  there  was  great  danger  in  our  day  from  great 
accumulations;  that  this  danger  ought  to  be  met  by 
taxation,  and  he  referred  to  the  fortune  of  the  Roth- 
schilds and  to  the  great  fortunes  made  in  America  to 
prove  his  point.     He  omitted,  however,  to  state  in  what 


202     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMXER 

the  danger  consisted  or  to  specify  what  harm  has  ever 
been  done  by  the  Rothschild  fortunes  or  by  the  great 
fortunes  accumulated  in  America.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
the  assertions  he  was  making,  and  the  measures  he  was 
recommending,  ex-cathedra,  were  very  serious  to  be 
thrown  out  so  recklessly.  It  is  hardly  to  be  expected 
that  novelists,  popular  magazinists,  amateur  economists, 
and  politicians  will  be  more  responsible.  It  would  be 
easy,  however,  to  show  what  good  is  done  by  accumu- 
lations of  capital  in  a  few  hands  —  that  is,  under  close 
and  direct  management,  permitting  prompt  and  accurate 
application;  also  to  tell  what  harm  is  done  by  loose  and 
unfounded  denunciations  of  any  social  component  or  any 
social  group.  In  the  recent  debates  on  the  income  tax 
the  assumption  that  great  accumulations  of  w^ealth  are 
socially  harmful  and  ought  to  be  broken  dow^n  by  taxa- 
tion was  treated  as  an  axiom,  and  we  had  direct  proof 
how  dangerous  it  is  to  fit  out  the  average  politician  with 
such  unverified  and  unverifiable  dogmas  as  his  warrant 
for  his  modes  of  handling  the  direful  tool  of  taxation. 

Great  figures  are  set  out  as  to  the  magnitude  of  certain 
fortunes  and  the  proportionate  amount  of  the  national 
wealth  held  by  a  fraction  of  the  population,  and  eloquent 
exclamation-points  are  set  against  them.  If  the  figures 
were  beyond  criticism,  what  would  they  prove  .^  ^Yhere 
is  the  rich  man  w^ho  is  oppressing  anybody.^  If  there 
was  one,  the  newspapers  would  ring  with  it.  The  facts 
about  the  accumulation  of  wealth  do  not  constitute  a 
plutocracy,  as  I  will  show  below.  Wealth,  in  itself 
considered,  is  only  power,  like  steam,  or  electricity,  or 
knowledge.  The  question  of  its  good  or  ill  turns  on  the 
question  how  it  w^ill  be  used.  To  prove  any  harm  in 
aggregations  of  wealth  it  must  be  sho^vTi  that  great  wealth 
is,  as  a  rule,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  social  affairs,  put 


ABSURD   EFFORT  203 

to  a  mischievous  use.  This  cannot  be  shown  beyond  the 
very  slightest  degree,  if  at  all. 

Therefore,  all  the  allegations  of  general  mischief,  social 
corruption,  wrong,  and  evil  in  our  society  must  be  referred 
back  to  those  who  make  them  for  particulars  and  speci- 
fications. As  they  are  offered  to  us  we  cannot  allow  them 
to  stand,  because  we  discern  in  them  faulty  observation 
of  facts,  or  incorrect  interpretation  of  facts,  or  a  con- 
struction of  facts  according  to  some  philosophy,  or  mis- 
understanding of  phenomena  and  their  relations,  or 
incorrect  inferences,  or  crooked  deductions. 

Assuming,  however,  that  the  charges  against  the 
existing  "capitalistic"  —  that  is,  industrial  —  order  of 
things  are  established,  it  is  proposed  to  remedy  the  ill 
by  reconstructing  the  industrial  system  on  the  principles 
of  democracy.  Once  more  we  must  untangle  the  snarl  of 
half  ideas  and  muddled  facts.  >^ 

Democracy  is,  of  course,  a  word  to  conjure  with.  We 
have  a  democratic-republican  political  system,  and  we 
like  it  so  well  that  we  are  prone  to  take  any  new  step 
which  can  be  recommended  as  "democratic"  or  which 
will  round  out  some  "principle"  of  democracy  to  a  fuller 
fulfillment.  Everything  connected  with  this  domain  of 
political  thought  is  crusted  over  with  false  historical 
traditions,  cheap  philosophy,  and  undefined  terms,  but 
it  is  useless  to  try  to  criticize  it.  The  whole  drift  of 
the  world  for  five  hundred  years  has  been  toward  democ- 
racy. That  drift,  produced  by  great  discoveries  and 
inventions,  and  by  the  discovery  of  a  new  continent,  has 
raised  the  middle  class  out  of  the  servile  class.  In  alliance 
with  the  crown  they  crushed  the  feudal  classes.  They 
made  the  crown  absolute  in  order  to  do  it.  Then  they 
turned  against  the  crown  and,  with  the  aid  of  the  handi- 
craftsmen and  peasants,  conquered  it.     Now  the  next 


204     ESSAYS  OF  WILLLVM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

conflict  which  must  inevitably  come  is  that  between  the 
middle  capitalist  class  and  the  proletariat,  as  the  word 
has  come  to  be  used.  If  a  certain  construction  is  put  on 
this  conflict,  it  may  be  called  that  between  democracy 
and  plutocracy,  for  it  seems  that  industrialism  must  be 
developed  into  plutocracy  by  the  conflict  itself.  That  is 
the  conflict  which  stands  before  civilized  society  to-day. 
All  the  signs  of  the  times  indicate  its  commencement, 
and  it  is  big  with  fate  to  mankind  and  to  civilization. 

Although  we  cannot  criticise  democracy  profitably,  it 
may  be  said  of  it,  with  reference  to  our  present  subject, 
that  up  to  this  time  democracy  never  has  done  anything, 
either  in  politics,  social  affairs,  or  industry,  to  prove  its 
power  to  bless  mankind.  If  we  confine  our  attention  to 
the  United  States,  there  are  three  diflSculties  with  regard 
to  its  alleged  achievements,  and  they  all  have  the  most 
serious  bearing  on  the  proposed  democratization  of  in- 
dustry. 

1.  The  time  during  which  democracy  has  been  tried  in 
the  United  States  is  too  short  to  warrant  any  inferences. 
A  century  or  two  is  a  very  short  time  in  the  life  of  polit- 
ical institutions,  and  if  the  circumstances  change  rapidly 
during  the  period  the  experiment  is  vitiated. 

2.  The  greatest  question  of  all  about  American  democ- 
racy is  whether  it  is  a  cause  or  a  consequence.  It  is 
popularly  assumed  to  be  a  cause,  and  we  ascribe  to  its 
beneficent  action  all  the  political  vitality,  all  the  easiness 
of  social  relations,  all  the  industrial  activity  and  enter- 
prise which  we  experience  and  which  we  value  and  enjoy. 
I  submit,  however,  that,  on  a  more  thorough  examina- 
tion of  the  matter,  we  shall  find  that  democracy  is  a  con- 
sequence. There  are  economic  and  sociological  causes 
for  our  political  vitality  and  vigor,  for  the  ease  and  elas- 
ticity of  our  social  relations,  and  for  our  industrial  power 


ABSURD   EFFORT  205 

and  success.  Those  causes  have  also  produced  democ- 
racy, given  it  success,  and  have  made  its  faults  and  errors 
innocuous.  Indeed,  in  any  true  philosophy,  it  must  be 
held  that  in  the  economic  forces  which  control  the  material 
prosperity  of  a  population  lie  the  real  causes  of  its  politi- 
cal institutions,  its  social  class-adjustments,  its  industrial 
prosperity,  its  moral  code,  and  its  world-philosophy.  If 
democracy  and  the  industrial  system  are  both  products 
of  the  economic  conditions  which  exist,  it  is  plainly  absurd 
to  set  democracy  to  defeat  those  conditions  in  the  control 
of  industry.  If,  however,  it  is  not  true  that  democracy 
is  a  consequence,  and  I  am  well  aware  that  very  few 
people  believe  it,  then  we  must  go  back  to  the  view  that 
democracy  is  a  cause.  That  being  so,  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  democracy,  which  has  had  a  clear  field  here 
in  America,  is  not  responsible  for  the  ills  which  Mr. 
Bellamy  and  his  comrades  in  opinion  see  in  our  present 
social  state,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  grounds  of  asking 
us  to  intrust  it  also  with  industry.  The  first  and  chief 
proof  of  success  of  political  measures  and  systems  is 
that,  under  them,  society  advances  in  health  and  vigor 
and  that  industry  develops  without  causing  social  disease. 
If  this  has  not  been  the  case  in  America,  American  democ- 
racy has  not  succeeded.  Neither  is  it  easy  to  see  how 
the  masses,  if  they  have  undertaken  to  rule,  can  escape 
the  responsibilities  of  ruling,  especially  so  far  as  the  con- 
sequences affect  themselves.  If,  then,  they  have  brought 
all  this  distress  upon  themselves  under  the  present  sys- 
tem, what  becomes  of  the  argument  for  extending  the;^ 
system  to  a  direct  and  complete  control  of  industry .^^ 
3.  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  democracy  in  the 
United  States  has  not,  up  to  this  time,  been  living  on 
a  capital  inherited  from  aristocracy  and  industrialism. 
We  have  no  pure  democracy.     Our  democracy  is  limited 


206      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER  . 

at  every  turn  by  institutions  which  were  developed  in 
England  in  connection  with  industrialism  and  aristocracy, 
and  these  institutions  are  of  the  essence  of  our  system. 
While  our  people  are  passionately  democratic  in  temper 
and  will  not  tolerate  a  doctrine  that  one  man  is  not  as 
good  as  another,  they  have  common  sense  enough  to 
know  that  he  is  not;  and  it  seems  that  they  love  and 
cling  to  the  conservative  institutions  quite  as  strongly  as 
they  do  to  the  democratic  philosophy.  They  are,  there- 
fore, ruled  by  men  who  talk  philosophy  and  govern  by 
the  institutions.  Now  it  is  open  to  Mr.  Bellamy  to  say 
that  the  reason  why  democracy  in  America  seems  to  be 
open  to  the  charge  made  in  the  last  paragraph,  of  respon- 
sibility for  all  the  ill  which  he  now  finds  in  our  society, 
is  because  it  has  been  infected  with  industrialism  (cap- 
italism); but  in  that  case  he  must  widen  the  scope  of 
his  proposition  and  undertake  to  purify  democracy  before 
turning  industry  over  to  it.  The  socialists  generally 
seem  to  think  that  they  make  their  undertakings  easier 
when  they  widen  their  scope,  and  make  them  easiest 
when  they  propose  to  remake  everything;  but  in  truth 
social  tasks  increase  in  difficulty  in  an  enormous  ratio 
as  they  are  widened  in  scope. 

The  question,  therefore,  arises,  if  it  is  proposed  to 
reorganize  the  social  system  on  the  principles  of  American 
democracy,  whether  the  institutions  of  industrialism  are 
to  be  retained.  If  so,  all  the  vicus  of  capitalism  will 
be  retained.  It  is  forgotten,  in  many  schemes  of  social 
reformation  in  which  it  is  proposed  to  mix  what  we  like 
with  what  we  do  not  like,  in  order  to  extirpate  the  latter, 
that  each  must  undergo  a  reaction  from  the  other,  and 
that  what  we  like  may  be  extirpated  by  what  we  do  not 
like.  We  may  find  that  instead  of  democratizing  cap- 
italism we  have  capitalized  democracy  —  that   is,  have 


ABSURD   EFFORT  207 

brought  in  plutocracy.  Plutocracy  is  a  political  system 
in  which  the  ruling  force  is  wealth.  The  denunciation 
of  capital  which  we  hear  from  all  the  reformers  is  the 
most  eloquent  proof  that  the  greatest  power  in  the  world 
to-day  is  capital.  They  know  that  it  is,  and  confess 
it  most  when  they  deny  it  most  strenuously.  At  present 
the  power  of  capital  is  social  and  industrial,  and  only  in 
a  small  degree  political.  So  far  as  capital  is  political, 
it  is  on  account  of  political  abuses,  such  as  tariffs  and 
special  legislation  on  the  one  hand  and  legislative  strikes 
on  the  other.  These  conditions  exist  in  the  democracy 
to  which  it  is  proposed  to  transfer  the  industries.  What 
does  that  mean  except  bringing  all  the  power  of  capital 
once  for  all  into  the  political  arena  and  precipitating  the 
conflict  of  democracy  and  plutocracy  at  once. ^^  Can  any- 
one imagine  that  the  masterfulness,  the  overbearing  dis- 
position, the  greed  of  gain,  and  the  ruthlessness  in 
methods,  which  are  the  faults  of  the  master  of  industry 
at  his  worst,  would  cease  when  he  was  a  functionary  of 
the  State,  which  had  relieved  him  of  risk  and  endowed 
him  with  authority.^  Can  anyone  imagine  that  poli- 
ticians would  no  longer  be  corruptly  fond  of  money, 
intriguing,  and  crafty  when  they  were  charged,  not  only 
with  patronage  and  government  contracts,  but  also  with 
factories,  stores,  ships,  and  railroads?  Could  we  expect 
anything  except  that,  when  the  politician  and  the  master 
of  industry  were  joined  in  one,  we  should  have  the  vices 
of  both  unchecked  by  the  restraints  of  either?  In  any 
socialistic  state  there  will  be  one  set  of  positions  which 
will  offer  chances  of  wealth  beyond  the  wildest  dreams 
of  avarice;  viz.,  on  the  governing  committees.  Then 
there  will  be  rich  men  whose  wealth  will  indeed  be  a 
menace  to  social  interests,  and  instead  of  industrial  peace 
there  will  be  such  war  as  no  one  has  dreamed  of  yet: 


208     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  war  between  the  political  ins  and  outs  —  that  is, 
between  those  who  are  on  the  committee  and  those  who 
want  to  get  on  it. 

We  must  not  drop  the  subject  of  democracy  without 
one  w^ord  more.  The  Greeks  already  had  occasion  to 
notice  a  most  serious  distinction  between  two  principles 
of  democracy  which  lie  at  its  roots.  Plutarch  says  that 
Solon  got  the  archonship  in  part  by  promising  equality, 
which  some  understood  of  esteem  and  dignity,  others  of 
measure  and  number.  There  is  one  democratic  prin- 
ciple which  means  that  each  man  should  be  esteemed  for 
his  merit  and  worth,  for  just  what  he  is,  without  regard 
to  birth,  wealth,  rank,  or  other  adventitious  circum- 
stances. The  other  principle  is  that  each  one  of  us 
ought  to  be  equal  to  all  the  others  in  what  he  gets  and 
enjoys.  The  first  principle  is  only  partially  realizable, 
but,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  elevating  and  socially  progressive 
and  profitable.  The  second  is  not  capable  of  an  intel- 
ligible statement.  The  first  is  a  principle  of  industrialism. 
It  proceeds  from  and  is  intelligible  only  in  a  society  built 
on  the  industrial  virtues,  free  endeavor,  security  of  prop- 
erty, and  repression  of  the  baser  vices;  that  is,  in  a  society 
whose  industrial  system  is  built  on  labor  and  exchange. 
The  other  is  only  a  rule  of  division  for  robbers  who  have 
to  divide  plunder  or  monks  who  have  to  divide  gifts. 
If,  therefore,  we  want  to  democratize  industry  in  the 
sense  of  the  first  principle,  we  need  only  perfect  what  we 
have  now,  especially  on  its  political  side.  If  we  try  to 
democratize  it  in  the  sense  of  the  other  principle,  we  cor- 
rupt politics  at  one  stroke;  we  enter  upon  an  industrial 
enterprise  which  will  waste  capital  and  bring  us  all  to 
poverty,  and  we  set  loose  greed  and  envy  as  ruling  social 
passions. 

If  this  poor  old  world  is  as  bad  as  they  say,  one  more 


ABSURD   EFFORT  209 

reflection  may  check  the  zeal  of  the  headlong  reformer. 
It  is  at  any  rate  a  tough  old  world.     It  has  taken  its 
trend  and  curvature  and  all  its  twists  and  tangles  from  a 
long  course  of  formation.     All  its  wry  and  crooked  gnarls 
and  knobs  are  therefore  stiff  and  stubborn.     If  we  puny 
men  by  our  arts  can  do  anything  at  all  to  straighten  them, 
it  will  only  be  by  modifying  the  tendencies  of  some  of     ^ 
the  forces  at  work,  so  that,  after  a  suflScient  time,  their 
action  may  be  changed  a  little  and  slowly  the  lines  of 
movement  may  be  modified.     This  effort,  however,  can 
at  most  be  only  slight,  and  it  will  take  a  long  time.     In 
the  meantime  spontaneous  forces  will  be  at  work,  com- 
pared with  which  our  efforts  are  like  those  of  a  man  try- 
ing to  deflect  a  river,  and  these  forces  will  have  changed 
the  whole  problem  before  our  interferences  have  time  to 
make  themselves  felt.     The  great  stream  of  time  and 
earthly  things  will  sweep  on  just  the  same  in  spite  of  us. 
It  bears  with  it  now  all  the  errors  and  follies  of  the  past, 
the  wreckage  of  all  the  philosophies,  the  fragments  of  all     ^ 
the  civilizations,  the  wisdom  of  all  the  abandoned  ethical 
systems,  the  debris  of  all  the  institutions,  and  the  penal- 
ties of  all  the  mistakes.     It  is  only  in  imagination  that  we 
stand  by  and  look  at  and  criticize  it  and  plan  to  change     | 
it.     Everyone  of  us  is  a  child  of  his  age  and  cannot  get  !• 
out  of  it.     He  is  in  the  stream  and  is  swept  along  with    i 
it.     All  his  sciences  and  philosophy  come  to  him  out  of 
it.     Therefore  the  tide  will  not  be  changed  by  us.     It 
will  swallow  up  both  us  and  our  experiments.     It  will    1 
absorb  the  efforts  at  change  and  take  them  into  itself 
as  new  but  trivial  components,  and  the  great  movement 
of  tradition  and  work  will  go  on  unchanged  by  our  fads 
and  schemes.     The  things  which  will  change  it  are  the 
great  discoveries  and  inventions,  the  new  reactions  inside  ^ 
the  social  organism,  and  the  changes  in  the  earth  itself  •^ 


210     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

on  account  of  changes  in  the  cosmical  forces.  These 
causes  will  make  of  it  just  what,  in  fidelity  to  them,  it 
ought  to  be.  The  men  will  be  carried  along  with  it  and 
be  made  by  it.  The  utmost  they  can  do  by  their  clever- 
ness will  be  to  note  and  record  their  course  as  they  are 
carried  along,  which  is  what  we  do  now,  and  is  that  which 
leads  us  to  the  vain  fancy  that  we  can  make  or  guide  the 
movement.  That  is  why  it  is  the  greatest  folly  of  which  ^ 
a  man  can  be  capable,  to  sit  down  with  a  slate  and  pencil 
to  plan  out  a  new  social  world.  ^ 


STATE  INTERFERENCE 


IX 

STATE  INTERFERENCE 

[1887] 

T  DESIRE,  in  this  paper,  to  give  an  explanation  and 
■*■  justification  of  extreme  prejudice  against  State  inter- 
ference, and  I  wish  to  begin  with  a  statement  from  his- 
tory of  the  effect  upon  the  individual  of  various  forms  of 
the  State. 

It  appears,  from  the  best  evidence  we  possess,  accord- 
ing to  the  most  reasonable  interpretation  which  has  been 
given  to  it,  that  the  internal  organization  of  society  owes 
its  cohesion  and  intensity  to  the  necessity  of  meeting  pres- 
sure from  without.  A  band  of  persons,  bound  by  ties 
of  neighborhood  or  kin,  clung  together  in  order  to  main- 
tain their  common  interests  against  a  similar  band  of 
their  neighbors.  The  social  bond  and  the  common  inter- 
est were  at  war  with  individual  interests.  They  exerted 
coercive  power  to  crush  individualism,  to  produce  uni- 
formity, to  proscribe  dissent,  to  make  private  judgment 
a  social  offense,  and  to  exercise  drill  and  discipline. 

In  the  Roman  State  the  internal  discipline  gave  victory 
in  contests  with  neighbors.  Each  member  of  the  Roman 
community  was  carried  up  by  the  success  of  the  body  of 
which  he  was  a  member  to  the  position  of  a  world-con- 
queror. Then  the  Roman  community  split  up  into  fac- 
tions to  quarrel  for  the  spoils  of  the  world,  until  the 
only  escape  from  chronic  civil  war  and  anarchy  was  a 
one-man  power,  which,  however,  proved  only  a  mode  of 
disintegration  and  decay,  not  a  cure  for  it.     It  has  often 

[213] 


214     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

been  remarked  with  astonishment  how  lightly  men  and 
women  of  rank  at  Rome  in  the  first  century  of  our  era 
held  their  lives.  They  seem  to  have  been  ready  to  open 
their  veins  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  to  quit  life  upon 
trivial  occasion.  If  we  can  realize  what  life  must  have 
been  in  such  a  State  we  can,  perhaps,  understand  this. 
The  Emperor  was  the  State.  He  was  a  mortal  who  had 
been  freed  from  all  care  for  the  rights  of  others,  and  his 
own  passions  had  all  been  set  free.  Any  man  or  woman 
in  the  civilized  world  was  at  the  mercy  of  his  caprices. 
Anyone  who  was  great  enough  to  attract  his  attention, 
especially  by  the  possession  of  anything  which  mortals 
covet,  held  his  life  at  the  utmost  peril.  Since  the  Em- 
pire was  the  world,  there  was  no  escape  save  to  get  out 
of  the  world.  Many  seemed  to  hold  escape  cheap  at 
that  price. 

At  first  under  the  Empire  the  obscure  people  were 
safe.  They  probably  had  little  to  complain  of,  and 
found  the  Empire  gay  and  beneficent;  but  it  gradually 
and  steadily  absorbed  every  rank  and  interest  into  its 
pitiless  organization.  At  last  industry  and  commerce  as 
well  as  all  civil  and  social  duties  took  the  form  of  State 
functions.  The  ideal  which  some  of  our  modern  social 
philosophers  are  preaching  was  realized.  The  State  was 
an  ethical  person,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word, 
when  it  was  one  man  and  when  every  duty  and  interest 
of  life  was  construed  towards  him.  All  relations  were 
regulated  according  to  the  ethics  of  the  time,  which  is, 
of  course,  all  that  ethical  regulation  ever  can  amount  to. 
Every  duty  of  life  took  the  form  and  name  of  an  "obse- 
quium";  that  is,  of  a  function  in  the  State  organism. 

Now  the  most  important  relation  of  the  citizen  to  the 
State  is  that  of  a  soldier,  and  the  next  is  that  of  a  tax- 
payer, and  when  the  former  loses  importance  the  latter 


STATE   INTERFERENCE  215 

becomes  the  chief.  Accordingly  the  obsequia  of  the 
citizens  in  the  later  centuries  were  regulated  in  such  a 
way  that  the  citizen  might  contribute  most  to  the  fiscus. 
He  was  not  only  made  part  of  a  machine,  but  it  was  a 
tax-paying  machine,  and  all  his  hopes,  rights,  interests, 
and  human  capabilities  were  merged  in  this  purpose  of 
his  existence.  Slavery,  as  we  ordinarily  understand  the 
term,  died  out,  but  it  gave  way  to  a  servitude  of  each 
to  all,  when  each  was  locked  tight  in  an  immense  and 
artificial  organization  of  society.  Such  must  ever  be  the 
effect  of  merging  industry  in  the  State.  Every  attempt 
of  the  Roman  handicraftsmen  to  better  themselves  was 
a  breach  of  the  peace;  disobedience  was  rebellion;  resist- 
ance was  treason;  running  away  was  desertion. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  long  history,  in  which  the  State 
power  first  served  the  national  interest  in  contest  with 
outside  powers,  and  then  itself  became  a  burden  and 
drew  all  the  life  out  of  the  subject  population. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  a  society  which  had  been  resolved 
into  its  simple  elements  had  to  re-form.  The  feudal  form 
was  imposed  upon  it  by  the  conditions  and  elements  of 
the  case.  It  was  as  impossible  for  a  man  to  stand  alone 
as  it  had  been  on  the  hunting  or  pastoral  stage  of  life 
or  on  the  lower  organizations  of  civilization.  There  was 
once  more  necessity  to  yield  personal  liberty  in  order  to 
get  protection  against  plunder  from  others,  and  in  order 
to  obtain  this  protection  it  was  necessary  to  get  into  a 
group  and  to  conform  to  its  organization.  Here  again  the 
same  difficulty  soon  presented  itself.  Protection  against 
outside  aggression  was  won,  but  the  protecting  power 
itself  became  a  plunderer. 

This  oppression  brought  about  guild  and  other  organ- 
izations for  mutual  defense.  Sometimes  these  organiza- 
tions themselves  won  civil  power;  sometimes  they  were 


216     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

under  some  political  sovereign,  but  possessed  its  sanction. 
The  system  which  grew  up  was  one  of  complete  regulation 
and  control.  The  guilds  were  regulated  in  every  func- 
tion and  right.  The  masters,  journeymen,  and  appren- 
tices were  regulated  in  their  relations  and  in  all  their 
rights  and  duties.  The  work  of  supplying  a  certain  com- 
munity with  any  of  the  necessaries  of  life  was  regarded  as  a 
privilege  and  was  monopolized  by  a  certain  number.  The 
mediaeval  system,  however,  did  not  allow  this  monopoly 
to  be  exploited  at  the  expense  of  consumers,  according 
to  the  good  will  of  the  holders  of  it.  The  sovereign 
interfered  constantly,  and  at  all  points,  wherever  its 
intervention  was  asked  for.  It  fixed  prices,  but  it  also 
fixed  wages,  regulated  kinds  and  prices  of  raw  materials, 
prescribed  the  relation  of  one  trade  to  another,  forbade 
touting,  advertising,  rivalry;  regulated  buying  and  sell- 
ing by  merchants;  protected  consumers  by  inspection; 
limited  importations,  but  might  force  production  and 
force  sales. 

Here  was  plainly  a  complete  system,  which  had  a 
rational  motive  and  a  logical  method.  The  object  was 
to  keep  all  the  organs  of  society  in  their  accepted  rela- 
tions to  each  other  and  to  preserve  all  in  activity  in  the 
measure  of  the  social  needs.  The  plan  failed  entirely. 
It  was  an  impossible  undertaking,  even  on  the  narrow 
arena  of  a  mediseval  city.  The  ordinances  of  an  authority 
which  stood  ready  to  interfere  at  any  time  and  in  any 
way  were  necessarily  inconsistent  and  contradictory.  Its 
effect  upon  those  who  could  not  get  into  the  system  — 
that  is,  upon  the  vagabondage  of  the  period  —  has  never, 
so  far  as  I  know,  been  studied  carefully,  although  that  is 
the  place  to  look  for  its  most  distinct  social  effect.  The 
most  interesting  fact  about  it,  however,  is  that  the  privi- 
lege of  one  age  became  the  bondage  of  the  next  and  that 


STATE   INTERFERENCE  217 

the  organization  which  had  grown  up  for  the  mutual 
defense  of  the  artisans  lost  its  original  purpose  and  became 
a  barrier  to  the  rise  of  the  artisan  class.  The  organiza- 
tion was  a  fetter  on  individual  enterprise  and  success. 

The  fact  should  not  be  overlooked  here  that,  if  we  are 
to  have  the  mediaeval  system  of  regulation  revived,  we 
want  it  altogether.  That  system  was  not,  in  intention, 
unjust.  According  to  its  light  it  aimed  at  the  welfare  of 
all.  It  was  not  its  motive  to  give  privileges,  but  a  sys- 
tem of  partial  interference  is  sure  to  be  a  system  of  favor- 
itism and  injustice.  It  is  a  system  of  charters  to  some  to 
plunder  others.  A  mediaeval  sovereign  would  never  inter- 
fere with  railroads  on  behalf  of  shippers  and  stop  there. 
He  would  fix  the  interest  on  bonds  and  other  fixed 
charges.  He  would,  upon  appeal,  regulate  the  wages  of 
employees.  He  would  fix  the  price  of  coal  and  other  sup- 
plies. He  would  never  admit  that  he  was  the  guardian 
of  one  interest  more  than  another,  and  he  would  inter- 
fere over  and  over  again  as  often  as  stockholders,  bond- 
holders, employees,  shippers,  etc.,  could  persuade  him 
that  they  had  a  grievance.  He  would  do  mischief  over 
and  over  again,  but  he  would  not  do  intentional  injustice. 

After  the  mediaeval  system  broke  up  and  the  great 
modern  States  formed,  the  royal  power  became  the  repre- 
sentative and  champion  of  national  interests  in  modern 
Europe,  and  it  established  itself  in  approximately  abso- 
lute power  by  the  fact  that  the  interest  of  the  nations  to 
maintain  themselves  in  the  rivalry  of  States  seemed  the 
paramount  interest.  Within  a  few  months  we  have  seen 
modern  Germany  discard  every  other  interest  in  order 
to  respond  to  the  supposed  necessity  of  military  defense. 
Not  very  long  ago,  in  our  Civil  War,  we  refused  to  take 
account  of  anything  else  until  the  military  task  was 
accomplished. 


218     ESSAYS  OF  ^YILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

In  all  these  cases  the  fact  appears  that  the  interest  of 
the  individual  and  the  social  interest  have  been  at  war 
with  each  other,  while,  again,  the  interests  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  and  through  the  society  of  which  he  is  a  member 
are  inseparable  from  those  of  the  society.  Such  are  the 
two  aspects  of  the  relation  of  the  unit  and  the  whole 
which  go  to  make  the  life  of  the  race.  The  individual 
has  an  interest  to  develop  all  the  personal  elements  there 
are  in  him.  He  wants  to  live  himself  out.  He  does 
not  want  to  be  planed  dowTi  to  a  type  or  pattern.  It  is 
the  interest  of  society  that  all  the  original  powers  it  con- 
tains should  be  brought  out  to  their  full  value.  But  the 
social  movement  is  coercive  and  uniformitarian.  Organ- 
ization and  discipline  are  essential  to  effective  common 
action,  and  they  crush  out  individual  enterprise  and 
personal  variety.  There  is  only  one  kind  of  cooperation 
which  escapes  this  evil,  and  that  is  cooperation  which  is 
voluntary  and  automatic,  under  common  impulses  and 
natural  laws.  State  control,  however,  is  always  neces- 
sary for  national  action  in  the  family  of  nations  and  to 
prevent  plunder  by  others,  and  men  have  never  yet 
succeeded  in  getting  it  without  falling  under  the  necessity 
of  submitting  to  plunder  at  home  from  those  on  whom 
they  rely  for  defense  abroad. 

Now,  at  the  height  of  our  civilization  and  with  the 
best  light  that  we  can  bring  to  bear  on  our  social  relations, 
the  problem  is:  Can  we  get  from  the  State  security  for 
individuals  to  pursue  happiness  in  and  under  it,  and  yet 
/  not  have  the  State  itself  become  a  new  burden  and  hin- 
drance only  a  little  better  than  the  evil  which  it  wards  off? 

It  is  only  in  the  most  recent  times,  and  in  such  measure 
as  the  exigencies  of  external  defense  have  been  diminished 
by  the  partial  abandonment  of  motives  of  plunder  and 
conquest,  that  there  has  been  a  chance  for  individualism 


STATE  INTERFERENCE  219 

to  grow.  In  the  latest  times  the  struggle  for  a  relaxation 
of  political  bonds  on  behalf  of  individual  liberty  has 
taken  the  form  of  breaking  the  royal  power  and  forcing 
the  king  to  take  his  hands  off.  Liberty  has  hardly  yet 
come  to  be  popularly  understood  as  anything  else  but 
republicanism  or  anti-royalty. 

The  United  States,  starting  on  a  new  continent,  with 
full  chance  to  select  the  old-world  traditions  which  they 
would  adopt,  have  become  the  representatives  and  cham- 
pions in  modern  times  of  all  the  principles  of  individualism 
and  personal  liberty.  We  have  had  no  neighbors  to  fear. 
We  have  had  no  necessity  for  stringent  State  discipline. 
Each  one  of  us  has  been  able  to  pursue  happiness  in  his 
own  way,  unhindered  by  the  demands  of  a  State  which 
would  have  worn  out  our  energies  by  expenditure  simply 
in  order  to  maintain  the  State.  The  State  has  existed  of 
itself.  The  one  great  exception,  the  Civil  War,  only 
illustrates  the  point  more  completely  "per  contra.  The 
old  Jeffersonian  party  rose  to  power  and  held  it,  because 
it  conformed  to  the  genius  of  the  country  and  bore  along 
the  true  destinies  of  a  nation  situated  as  this  one  was. 
It  is  the  glory  of  the  United  States,  and  its  calling  in 
history,  that  it  shows  what  the  power  of  personal  liberty 
is  —  what  self-reliance,  energy,  enterprise,  hard  sense 
men  can  develop  when  they  have  room  and  liberty  and 
when  they  are  emancipated  from  the  burden  of  traditions 
and  faiths  which  are  nothing  but  the  accumulated  follies 
and  blunders  of  a  hundred  generations  of  "statesmen." 

It  is,  therefore,  the  highest  product  of  political  insti- 
tutions so  far  that  they  have  come  to  a  point  where, 
under  favorable  circumstances,  individualism  is,  under 
their  protection,  to  some  extent  possible.  If  political  in- 
stitutions can  give  security  for  the  pursuit  of  happiness 
by  each  individual,  according  to  his  own  notion  of  it,  in 


220     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

his  own  way,  and  by  his  own  means,  they  have  reached 
their  perfection.  This  fact,  however,  has  two  aspects. 
If  no  man  can  be  held  to  serve  another  man's  happiness, 
it  follows  that  no  man  can  call  on  another  to  serve  his 
happiness.  The  different  views  of  individualism  depend 
on  which  of  these  aspects  is  under  observation.  What 
seems  to  be  desired  now  is  a  combination  of  liberty  for 
all  with  an  obligation  of  each  to  all.  That  is  one  of  the 
forms  in  which  we  are  seeking  a  social  philosopher's  stone. 

The  reflex  influence  which  American  institutions  have 
had  on  European  institutions  is  well  known.  W^e  have 
had  to  take  as  well  as  give.  When  the  United  States 
put  upon  their  necks  the  yoke  of  a  navigation  and  colonial 
system  which  they  had  just  revolted  against,  they  showed 
how  little  possible  it  is,  after  all,  for  men  to  rise  above 
the  current  notions  of  their  time,  even  when  geographical 
and  economic  circumstances  favor  their  emancipation. 
We  have  been  borrowing  old-world  fashions  and  tradi- 
tions all  through  our  history,  instead  of  standing  firmly 
by  the  political  and  social  philosophy  of  which  we  are 
the  standard-bearers. 

So  long  as  a  nation  has  not  lost  faith  in  itself  it  is 
possible  for  it  to  remodel  its  institutions  to  any  extent. 
If  it  gives  way  to  sentimentalism,  or  sensibility,  or  polit- 
ical mysticism,  or  adopts  an  affectation  of  radicalism,  or 
any  other  ism,  or  molds  its  institutions  so  as  to  round  out 
to  a  more  complete  fulfillment  somebody's  theory  of  the 
universe,  it  may  fall  into  an  era  of  revolution  and  politi- 
cal insecurity  which  will  break  off  the  continuity  of  its 
national  life  and  make  orderly  and  secure  progress  impos- 
sible. Now  that  the  royal  power  is  limited,  and  that 
the  old  military  and  police  States  are  in  the  way  of  tran- 
sition to  jural  States,  we  are  promised  a  new  advance  to 
democracy.     What  is  the  disposition  of  the  new  State 


STATE   INTERFERENCE  221 

as  regards  the  scope  of  its  power?  It  unquestionably 
manifests  a  disposition  to  keep  and  use  the  whole  arsenal 
of  its  predecessors.  The  great  engine  of  political  abuse  has 
always  been  political  mysticism.  Formerly  we  were  told 
of  the  divine  origin  of  the  State  and  the  divine  authority 
of  rulers.  The  mystical  contents  of  "sovereignty"  have 
always  provided  an  inexhaustible  source  of  dogma  and 
inference  for  any  extension  of  State  power.  The  new 
democracy  having  inherited  the  power  so  long  used  against 
it,  now  shows  every  disposition  to  use  that  power  as  ruth- 
lessly as  any  other  governing  organ  ever  has  used  it. 

We  are  told  that  the  State  is  an  ethical  person.  This 
is  the  latest  form  of  political  mysticism.  Now,  it  is  true 
that  the  State  is  an  ethical  person  in  just  the  same  sense 
as  a  business  firm,  a  joint  stock  corporation,  or  a  debating 
society.  It  is  not  a  physical  person,  but  it  may  be  a 
metaphysical  or  legal  person,  and  as  such  it  has  an 
entity  and  is  an  independent  subject  of  rights  and  duties. 
Like  the  other  ethical  persons,  however,  the  State  is  just 
good  for  what  it  can  do  to  serve  the  interests  of  man, 
and  no  more.  Such  is  far  from  being  the  meaning  and 
utility  of  the  dogma  that  the  State  is  an  ethical  person. 
The  dogma  is  needed  as  a  source  from  which  can  be  spun 
out  again  contents  of  phrases  and  deductions  previously 
stowed  away  in  it.  It  is  only  the  most  modern  form  of 
\  dogmatism  devised  to  sacrifice  the  man  to  the  institution 
^  which  is  not  good  for  anything  except  so  far  as  it  can 
serve  the  man. 

One  of  the  newest  names  for  the  coming  power  is  the 
"omnicracy."  Mankind  has  been  trying  for  some  thou- 
sands of  years  to  find  the  right  -ocracy.  None  of  those 
which  have  yet  been  tried  have  proved  satisfactory.  We 
want  a  new  name  on  which  to  pin  new  hopes,  for  man- 
kind "never  is,  but  always  to  be  blessed."     Omnicracy 


222     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

has  this  much  sense  in  it,  that  no  one  of  the  great  dogmas 
of  the  modern  poHtical  creed  is  true  if  it  is  affirmed  of 
anything  less  than  the  whole  population,  man,  woman, 
child,  and  baby.  When  the  propositions  are  enunciated 
in  this  sense  they  are  philosophically  grand  and  true. 
For  instance,  all  the  propositions  about  the  "people" 
are  grand  and  true  if  we  mean  by  the  people  every  soul 
in  the  community,  with  all  the  interests  and  powers  which 
give  them  an  aggregate  will  and  power,  with  capacity  to 
suffer  or  to  work;  but  then,  also,  the  propositions  remain 
grand  abstractions  beyond  the  realm  of  practical  utility. 
On  the  other  hand,  those  propositions  cannot  be  made 
practically  available  unless  they  are  affirmed  of  some 
limited  section  of  the  population,  for  instance,  a  majority 
of  the  males  over  twenty-one;  but  then  they  are  no  longer 
true  in  philosophy  or  in  fact. 

Consequently,  when  the  old-fashioned  theories  of  State 
interference  are  applied  to  the  new  democratic  State,  they 
turn  out  to  be  simply  a  device  for  setting  separate  inter- 
ests in  a  struggle  against  each  other  inside  the  society. 
It  is  plain  on  the  face  of  all  the  great  questions  which  are 
offered  to  us  as  political  questions  to-day,  that  they  are 
simply  struggles  of  interests  for  larger  shares  of  the  prod- 
uct of  industry.  One  mode  of  dealing  with  this  distribu- 
tion would  be  to  leave  it  to  free  contract  under  the  play 
of  natural  laws.  If  we  do  not  do  this,  and  if  the  State 
interferes  with  the  distribution,  how  can  we  stop  short 
of  the  mediaeval  plan  of  reiterated  and  endless  inter- 
ference, with  constant  diminution  of  the  total  product 
to  be  divided.^ 

We  have  seen  above  what  the  tyranny  was  in  the  decay 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  when  each  was  in  servitude  to  all; 
but  there  is  one  form  of  that  tyranny  which  may  be 
still  worse.     That  tyranny  will  be  realized  when  the  same 


STATE  INTERFERENCE  223 

system  of  servitudes  is  established  in  a  democratic 
state;  when  a  man's  neighbors  are  his  masters;  when  the 
"ethical  power  of  pubhc  opinion"  bears  down  upon  him 
at  all  hours  and  as  to  all  matters;  when  his  place  is 
assigned  to  him  and  he  is  held  in  it,  not  by  an  emperor 
or  his  satellites,  who  cannot  be  everywhere  all  the  time, 
but  by  the  other  members  of  the  "village  community" 
who  can. 

So  long  as  the  struggle  for  individual  liberty  took  the 
form  of  a  demand  that  the  king  or  the  privileged  classes 
should  take  their  hands  off,  it  was  popular  and  was 
believed  to  carry  with  it  the  cause  of  justice  and  civiliza- 
tion. Now  that  the  governmental  machine  is  brought 
within  everyone's  reach,  the  seduction  of  power  is  just 
as  masterful  over  a  democratic  faction  as  ever  it  was 
over  king  or  barons.  No  governing  organ  has  yet  ab- 
stained from  any  function  because  it  acknowledged  itself 
ignorant  or  incompetent.  The  new  powers  in  the  State 
show  no  disposition  to  do  it.  Nevertheless,  the  activity 
of  the  State,  under  the  new  democratic  system,  shows 
itself  every  year  more  at  the  mercy  of  clamorous  factions, 
and  legislators  find  themselves  constantly  under  greater 
pressure  to  act,  not  by  their  deliberate  judgment  of 
what  is  expedient,  but  in  such  a  way  as  to  quell  clamor, 
although  against  their  judgment  of  public  interests.  It  is 
rapidly  becoming  the  chief  art  of  the  legislator  to  devise 
measures  which  shall  sound  as  if  they  satisfied  clamor 
while  they  only  cheat  it. 

There  are  two  things  which  are  often  treated  as  if 
they  were  identical,  which  are  as  far  apart  as  any  two 
things  in  the  field  of  political  philosophy  can  be:  (1) 
That  everyone  should  be  left  to  do  as  he  likes,  so  far  as 
possible,  without  any  other  social  restraints  than  such 
as  are  unavoidable  for  the  peace  and  order  of  society. 


224     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMXER 

(2)  That  "the  people"  should  be  allowed  to  carry  out 
their  will  without  any  restraint  from  constitutional  insti- 
tutions. The  former  means  that  each  should  have  his 
own  way  with  his  own  interests;  the  latter,  that  any 
faction  w^hich  for  the  time  is  uppermost  should  have  its 
own  way  with  all  the  rest. 

One  result  of  all  the  new  State  interference  is  that  the 
State  is  being  superseded  in  vast  domains  of  its  proper 
work.  While  it  is  reaching  out  on  one  side  to  fields  of 
socialistic  enterprise,  interfering  in  the  interests  of  parties 
in  the  industrial  organism,  assuming  knowledge  of  eco- 
nomic laws  which  nobody  possesses,  taking  ground  as  to 
dogmatic  notions  of  justice  which  are  absurd,  and  acting 
because  it  does  not  know  what  to  do,  it  is  losing  its 
power  to  give  peace,  order,  and  security.  The  extra- 
legal power  and  authority  of  leaders  over  voluntary 
organizations  of  men  throughout  a  community  w^ho  are 
banded  together  in  order  to  press  their  interests  at  the 
expense  of  other  interests,  and  who  go  to  the  utmost 
verge  of  the  criminal  law,  if  they  do  not  claim  immunity 
from  it,  while  obeying  an  authority  w^hich  acts  in  secret 
and  without  responsibility,  is  a  phenomenon  which  shows 
the  inadequacy  of  the  existing  State  to  guarantee  rights 
and  give  security.  The  boycott  and  the  plan  of  cam- 
paign are  certainly  not  industrial  instrumentalities,  and 
it  is  not  yet  quite  certain  whether  they  are  violent  and 
criminal  instrumentalities,  by  which  some  men  coerce 
other  men  in  matters  of  material  interests.  If  we  turn 
our  minds  to  the  victims  of  these  devices,  we  see  that 
/  they  do  not  find  in  the  modern  State  that  security  for 
their  interests  under  the  competition  of  life  which  it  is 
the  first  and  unquestioned  duty  of  the  State  to  provide. 
The  boycotted  man  is  deprived  of  the  peaceful  enjoy- 
ment of  rights  which  the  laws  and  institutions  of  his 


STATE  INTERFERENCE  225 

country  allow  him,  and  he  has  no  redress.  The  State 
has  forbidden  all  private  war  on  the  ground  that  it  will 
give  a  remedy  for  wrongs,  and  that  private  redress  would 
disturb  the  peaceful  prosecution  of  their  own  interests 
by  other  members  of  the  community  who  are  not  parties 
to  the  quarrel;  but  we  have  seen  an  industrial  war  para- 
lyze a  whole  section  for  weeks,  and  it  was  treated  almost 
as  a  right  of  the  parties  that  they  might  fight  it  out,  no 
matter  at  what  cost  to  bystanders.  We  have  seen  repre- 
sentative bodies  of  various  voluntary  associations  meet 
and  organize  by  the  side  of  the  regular  constitutional 
organs  of  the  State,  in  order  to  deliberate  on  proposed 
measures  and  to  transmit  to  the  authorized  representa- 
tives of  the  people  their  approval  or  disapproval  of  the 
propositions,  and  it  scarcely  caused  a  comment.  The 
plutocracy  invented  the  lobby,  but  the  democracy  here 
also  seems  determined  to  better  the  instruction.  There 
are  various  opinions  as  to  what  the  revolution  is  which 
is  upon  us,  and  as  to  what  it  is  which  is  about  to  perish. 
I  do  not  see  anything  else  which  is  in  as  great  peril  as 
representative  institutions  or  the  constitutional  State. 

I  therefore  maintain  that  it  is  at  the  present  time  a 
matter  of  patriotism  and  civic  duty  to  resist  the  extension 
of  State  interference.  It  is  one  of  the  proudest  results  of 
political  growth  that  we  have  reached  the  point  where 
individualism  is  possible.  Nothing  could  better  show 
the  merit  and  value  of  the  institutions  which  we  have 
inherited  than  the  fact  that  we  can  afford  to  play  with 
all  these  socialistic  and  semi-socialistic  absurdities.  They 
have  no  great  importance  until  the  question  arises:  Will 
a  generation  which  can  be  led  away  into  this  sort  of 
frivolity  be  able  to  transmit  intact  institutions  which 
were  made  only  by  men  of  sterling  thought  and  power, 
and  which  can  be  maintained  only  by  men  of  the  same 


226     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

type?  I  am  familiar  with  the  irritation  and  impatience 
with  which  remonstrances  on  this  matter  are  received. 
Those  who  know  just  how  the  world  ought  to  be  recon- 
structed are,  of  course,  angry  when  they  are  pushed  aside 
as  busy  bodies.  A  group  of  people  who  assail  the  legis- 
lature with  a  plan  for  regulating  their  neighbor's  mode 
of  living  are  enraged  at  the  "dogma"  of  non-interference. 
The  publicist  who  has  been  struck  by  some  of  the  super- 
ficial roughnesses  in  the  collision  of  interests  which  must 
occur  in  any  time  of  great  industrial  activity,  and  who 
has  therefore  determined  to  waive  the  objections  to  State 
interference,  if  he  can  see  it  brought  to  bear  on  his  pet 
reform,  will  object  to  absolute  principles.  For  my  part, 
I  have  never  seen  that  public  or  private  principles  were 
good  for  anything  except  when  there  seemed  to  be  a 
motive  for  breaking  them.  Anyone  who  has  studied  a 
question  as  to  which  the  solution  is  yet  wanting  may 
despair  of  the  power  of  free  contract  to  solve  it.  I  have 
examined  a  great  many  cases  of  proposed  interference 
with  free  contract,  and  the  only  alternative  to  free  con- 
tract which  I  can  find  is  "heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose" 
in  favor  of  one  party  or  the  other.  I  am  familiar  with 
the  criticisms  which  some  writers  claim  to  make  upon 
individualism,  but  the  worst  individualism  I  can  find  in 
history  is  that  of  the  Jacobins,  and  I  believe  that  it  is 
logically  sound  that  the  anti-social  vices  should  be  most 
developed  whenever  the  attempt  is  made  to  put  socialistic 
theories  in  practice.  The  only  question  at  this  point 
is:  Which  may  we  better  trust,  the  play  of  free  social 
forces  or  legislative  and  administrative  interference? 
This  question  is  as  pertinent  for  those  who  expect  to  win 
by  interference  as  for  others,  for  whenever  we  try  to  get 
paternalized  we  only  succeed  in  getting  policed. 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE? 


X 

DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE? 

[1889] 

TT  cannot  be  said  that  the  discussion  of  the  so-called 
■^  labor  question  has  been  productive  of  any  positive 
results  in  the  way  of  making  us  understand  the  facts 
and  relations  of  the  industrial  system  any  better.  The 
discussion  has  fallen  into  certain  grooves  and  has  re- 
volved around  certain  assumptions  and  pet  notions.  It 
has  become  almost  hidden  under  conventionalities  and 
has  bred  a  series  of  commonplaces.  An  actual  ortho- 
doxy has  arisen  in  connection  with  it,  dissent  from  which 
is  regarded  with  horror.  A  code  of  discussion  has  been 
elaborated  for  it  and  a  certain  conventional  tone  of 
mind  has  come  to  be  recognized  as  proper  to  be  assumed 
before  taking  part  in  it.  Consequently  the  future  his- 
torian will  read  our  labor-bureau  literature  as  a  revela- 
tion of  the  mental  fashion  of  our  time.  There  never  has 
been  any  literature  just  like  it,  inasmuch  as  its  chief  aim 
is,  while  maintaining  some  of  the  forms  of  a  scientific 
investigation,  to  reach  results  which  shall  not  brush 
rudely  against  the  pet  notions  of  any  important  school 
of  social  opinion,  or  against  any  one  of  the  strong  interests 
which  are  in  conflict. 

The  consequence  of  the  discussion  is  not  matter  for 
wonder  when  we  consider  how  it  has  been  carried  on. 
Very  rarely  has  anyone  taken  part  in  it  who  has  been  a 
party  to  the  industrial  war.  The  discussion  has  been 
almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of  socialists,  social  reformers. 


230     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

friends  of  the  people,  economists,  and  prophets  of  a  new 
social  dispensation.  If  these  classes  of  persons  take  up 
the  discussion  of  matters  affecting  the  practical  relations 
of  parties  in  the  industrial  organization,  it  is  inevitable 
that  the  discussion  should  take  exactly  the  turn  which 
has  just  been  described;  that  is  to  say,  that  it  should 
become  conventionalized,  should  lose  actuality,  should 
speedily  run  down  into  a  repetition  of  commonplaces, 
should  be  controlled  by  dogmatic  assumptions,  not  of 
fact,  but  of  ethical  relation,  and  in  all  this  should  be,  as 
the  saying  is,  "up  in  a  balloon." 

It  has  been  said  by  those  who  are  in  the  best  position 
to  know,  that  great  inventions  take  place  step  by  step, 
and  that  they  advance  best  by  reaching  a  point  where 
all  further  progress  is  arrested  by  one  difficulty  which 
can  be  sharply  and  specifically  defined.  Then  effort  can 
be  concentrated  on  this  point  till  it  is  conquered.  It  is 
said  that  when  ocean  steamers  were  first  built,  their 
development  was  arrested  by  the  fact  that  no  means 
then  in  use  were  adequate  to  forge  such  masses  of  iron 
as  were  required  for  the  shafts.  The  problem  put  to  the 
inventors  was  to  invent  a  steam  hammer  capable  of  forg- 
ing shafts.  The  problem,  being  thus  set,  was  soon  solved. 
Other  instances  in  the  recent  history  of  electric  lighting, 
the  telephone,  etc.,  suggest  themselves.  It  is  evident 
that  the  progress  is  most  steady  and  certain  when  it 
goes  on  with  a  regularity  and  system  which  produce  a 
succession  of  these  narrow,  specific,  sharply  defined  ques- 
tions or  problems. 

In  like  manner  the  life  of  a  society  brings  to  the  front 
a  series  of  social  and  political  problems.  It  is  one  of 
the  tests  of  a  real,  rational,  and  practical  political  ques- 
tion that  it  likewise  is  specific,  narrow  in  scope,  and 
capable  of  simple  formulation;  and  on  the  other  hand. 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?         231 

it  is  a  sign  of  a  matter  which  is  crude,  unreal,  fantastic, 
and  certainly  not  yet  ready  for  practical  solution,  that 
it  is  grand,  vague,  ethical,  and  aims  at  producing  "states 
of  things,"  and  not  at  realizing  a  single  positive  result. 

For  instance,  when  a  State  has  suspended  specie  pay- 
ment, a  proper  political  and  public  question  is:  Shall  we 
resume  specie  payment?  Another  question  which  answers 
the  test  is:  Shall  we  abolish  the  protective  taxes?  It  has 
always  been  one  difficulty  with  the  reform  of  the  civil 
service,  as  a  political  topic  or  question,  that  it  is  not 
easy  to  reduce  it  to  an  issue  of  positive  form  and  that 
it  easily  runs  out  into  regrets,  complaints,  scoldings,  or 
alarmist  criticisms,  whereupon  it  dissolves  and  is  lost. 
The  so-called  silver  question  has  never  yet  been  reduced 
to  a  question.  It  never  will  be  until  it  is  asked  whether 
4 12 J  grains  of  standard  silver  shall  be  the  American 
dollar.  Last  year  we  had  the  fisheries  question,  which 
never  really  reached  public  opinion,  because  it  never  was 
reduced  to  a  question. 

The  labor  question  is  the  most  remarkable  example 
that  could  be  brought  forward  of  a  topic  of  public  talk 
which  has  never  been  reduced  to  any  definite  form. 
According  to  the  only  actual  attempt  to  define  it  which 
has  ever  been  made  by  anybody  within  my  knowledge, 
the  labor  question  means  things  in  general,  and  consists 
in  a  regret  that  this  world  is  such  a  hard  place  in  which 
to  get  a  living  and  in  an  enthusiastic  aspiration  for  greater 
ease  and  facility  in  that  respect. 

The  discussion  of  all  ill-defined  questions  is  sure  to 
run  off  into  whims  and  useless  wrangling.  Even  a  real 
question,  if  it  is  not  yet  ripe,  must  undergo  a  great  deal 
of  preliminary  thrashing  (which  ought  to  be  accomplished 
on  the  academic  arena)  before  it  can  be  got  into  the 
positive  form  of  a  public  poHtical  question  or  a  proposed 


232     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

modification  of  custom  and  usage.  It  is  inevitable  in 
the  nature  of  things  that  a  great  amount  of  energy  must 
be  wasted  in  preHminary  work,  which  results  only  in 
finding  out  what  the  question  is;  but  we  ought  to  have 
some  test  which  would  show  us  whether  we  are  going  in 
the  proper  direction  and  whether  there  is  reasonable 
probability  that  we  shall  accomplish  something  on  the 
line  we  are  pursuing.  One  such  test  is  to  notice  whether 
the  topic  converges  to  a  simple  issue  or  whether  it  dis- 
solves into  mere  logomachy  and  word-juggling. 

Now  it  is  characteristic  of  the  discussion  of  the  various 
forms  of  industrial  war  that  they  have  lost  definiteness, 
instead  of  winning  it,  during  the  last  years.  It  has  come 
out  of  the  discussion,  as  almost  the  sole  result,  that  we 
have  a  whole  vocabulary  of  words  of  which  we  have  no 
settled  definition,  which  different  people  use  in  very  dif- 
ferent senses  (for  example,  labor  and  capital,  monopoly, 
competition,  workingman,  wages,  cost  of  production), 
and  that  all  social  theorems  or  principles  are  as  yet  so 
obscure  that  a  mist  of  transcendentalism  and  mysticism 
hangs  over  them  all,  which  renders  them  most  inviting 
to  the  crank.  One  is  at  a  loss  how  to  go  on  with  any 
such  discussion  at  all,  for  the  reason  that  he  can  hardly 
use  the  only  terms  which  the  language  affords  for  express- 
ing thoughts  about  it,  without  using  terms  which,  within 
his  knowledge,  have  become  parts  of  the  jargon  of  pseudo- 
science  and  bogus  philosophy. 

Such  being  the  position  of  the  matter  in  the  world  of 
thought  and  discussion,  while  it  is  in  daily  experience  a 
matter  affecting  the  interests  and  happiness  of  great 
numbers  of  people  who  are  brought  into  antagonism  to 
each  other,  any  attempt  to  deal  with  it  by  legislation 
must  be  the  purest  empiricism.  We  are  told  that  the 
coming  session  of  the  German  Parliament  is  to  be  occu- 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?  233 

pied  with  measures  for  the  prevention  of  strikes.  It 
will  be  an  interesting  experiment,  and  one  on  many 
accounts  deserving  of  careful  watching.  The  Emperor 
some  weeks  ago,  in  his  speeches  about  the  strike  then 
existing,  gave  it  to  be  understood  that  he  could  and 
would  stop  strikes,  putting  both  masters  and  men  in 
their  proper  places.  He  seems  just  now  to  have  the  key 
of  the  universe,  and  it  will  be  interesting  for  us,  who 
are  at  a  safe  distance,  to  stand  by  and  see  him  use  it. 
The  experiment  of  State  socialistic  legislation  and  tyran- 
nical anti-socialist  legislation,  both  at  the  same  time,  is, 
to  say  the  least,  bold  and  interesting.  It  is  not  possible 
now  to  say  what  the  question  will  be  which  will  come 
before  the  Parliament.  If  it  is:  How  can  we  put  down 
strikes.^  the  first  incidental  question  will  be:  How  do  you 
know  that  you  want  to  put  down  strikes.^ 

There  are  only  two  ways  in  which  strikes  can  be  put 
down.  The  first  is  to  make  it  a  crime  to  strike  and 
to  punish  it  with  pains  and  penalties.  That  way  has 
been  tried  and  is  effete.  That  way  was  addressed  to 
the  employees.  The  other  way  must  be  addressed  to  the 
employers,  and  will  consist  in  compelling  them  to  pay 
what  the  employed  ask  for.  At  present,  wages  are  fixed 
by  a  contract  between  two  consenting  parties.  If  either 
party  wants  to  revise  the  contract  —  that  is  to  say,  to 
make  a  new  one  —  they  must  both  consent  again,  else 
there  is  a  strike  or  a  lock-out.  How  can  this  be  prevented" 
except  by  forcing  that  one  to  consent  who  is  holding 
back.^  Then,  however,  his  will  is  coerced,  his  interests 
are  sacrificed,  and  his  civil  or  social  freedom  is  violated. 
Hence  the  obvious  fallacy  of  arbitration.  There  is  no 
time  when  a  man  is  more  supremely  sovereign  and  inde- 
pendent than  when  he  is  making  a  contract,  for  then  he 
is  freely  subjecting  himself  to  conditions  which  he  con- 


234     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

siders  satisfactory,  for  purposes  which  he  considers  worth 
obtaining.  It  is  only  another  of  the  confusions  which 
have  been  introduced  into  this  subject  that  a  juggle  is 
made  here  on  the  word  "free."  It  is  declared  that  the 
contract  is  not  free,  because  it  is  made  under  the  existing 
conditions  of  the  market,  which  may  be  hard  for  one  of 
the  parties  —  an  objection  which  is  entirely  irrelevant, 
since  the  only  "freedom"  which  can  here  come  into 
account,  where  the  proposition  is  to  use  civil  and  social 
coercion,  is  civil  and  social  freedom  If,  then,  a  man  is 
making  a  contract,  how  can  anybody  else  judge  for  him 
what  conditions  he  shall  submit  to  or  what  ends  he 
ought  to  consider  worth  attaining?  His  final  and  per- 
fectly conclusive  answer  is:  I  will,  or,  I  will  not.  Now 
if  one  man  can  force  another,  by  virtue  of  law  and  social 
force,  to  enter  into  a  contract  which  is  not  satisfactory 
to  him  —  that  is  to  say,  which  is  not  the  best  one  that  he 
thinks  he  can  make  —  then  the  latter  is  a  slave  and  the 
relationship  might  serve  as  a  definition  of  slavery.  This 
is  as  true  if  the  victim  is  an  employer  as  if  he  were  an 
employee. 

Industrial  war  is,  in  fact,  an  incident  of  liberty.  It  is 
an  inconvenience;  it  is  doubtful  if  it  is  an  evil.  The 
greatest  injustice  about  war  is  that  it  imposes  loss  and 
harm  on  those  who  are  not  parties  to  it.  If  two  nations 
go  to  war,  they  interfere  with  all  their  neighbors  by  break- 
ing up  the  regular  currents  of  trade  and  industry  and 
cutting  off  the  ten  thousand  relations  of  various  kinds 
which  have  sprung  up  during  peace  and  which  affect 
the  happiness  and  welfare  of  all  mankind.  It  is  so  in 
industrial  war.  Strikes  and  railroad  wars  cause  loss  and 
inconvenience  to  thousands  who  are  not  parties  to  the 
quarrel  at  all,  because  they  upset  all  those  social  and 
industrial  relationships  upon  which  the  regularity  and 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?         235 

security  of  modern  society  depend.  They  destroy  the 
social  organization  which  is  our  rehance  nowadays  for 
the  supply  of  our  needs.  Indeed,  this  is  the  real  strain 
upon  which  a  strike  relies  for  its  hopes  of  success;  and  if 
there  is  any  justification  for  legislation  to  prevent  indus- 
trial war,  it  lies  in  this  interest  of  the  public,  not  in  any 
interest  of  either  of  the  parties.  It  is  an  interesting^ 
thing  to  notice  that  industrial  war  has  arisen  in 
modern  society  in  proportion  as  greater  State  organ- 
ization has  modified  the  old  form  of  chronic  war  and^ 
brigandage. 

There  is  an  interesting  and  important  parallel  to  this 
transformation  of  one  kind  of  social  ill  into  another, 
attendant  upon  what  we  call  progress,  in  another  branch 
of  the  social  organization.  A  century  ago  France  was^ 
so  thoroughly  policed  that  violence  or  breach  of  public 
order  was  scarcely  possible.  In  general,  even  now,  any-~ 
where  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  the  man  who  first 
strikes  a  blow  is  held  to  be  in  the  wrong,  without  much 
regard  to  provocation,  because  he  violates  public  peace 
and  order.  In  Russia  any  overt  act  of  violence  meets 
with  very  prompt  suppression,  without  regard  to  the 
grievance  which  caused  it.  This  may  be  the  very  worst 
tyranny  and  wrong,  unless  it  is  attended  by  a  constant 
and  effective  redress  of  all  grievances  upon  proper  com- 
plaint. Now  a  modern  election,  such  as  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  in  this  country,  is  a  form  of  riot  and  disorder 
which  would  have  set  the  whole  police  of  France  in  agita- 
tion a  century  ago.  A  sarcastic  critic  might  find  many 
amusing  analogies  by  which  to  sustain  the  proposition 
that  a  modern  American  election  is  only  a  revolution 
under  legal  form;  that  it  is  a  fight  of  two  factions  for 
State  power  under  legal  form,  but  that  it  works  by  the 
same  means  and  toward  the  same  end  as  a  palace  revo- 


236     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

lution,  only  openly  and  avowedly.  Such  an  assertion 
would  be  extravagant  and  untrue,  but  not  devoid  of 
foundation.  Political  liberty  must  have  room  in  which 
to  play.  It  will,  in  iti  moments  of  transition  and  new 
creation,  lose  the  forms  of  disciplined  and  harmonious 
action  and  undergo  crises  of  disorder,  struggle,  and 
strife. 

In  the  same  manner  industrial  war  is  an  attendant 
upon  liberty.  It  has  come  just  because  industry  has 
been  unfettered  and  has  been  allowed  to  shape  itself 
freely.  How  can  it  shape  itself  freely  unless  it  works  out 
the  full  effect  of  all  the  forces  that  are  in  it.?  It  would 
be  a  fatal  undertaking  to  endeavor  to  police  elections  in 
such  a  way  as  to  put  an  end  to  those  features  of  them 
which,  from  the  standpoint  of  ordinary  times,  are  dis- 
orderly; for  he  who  policed  would  soon  elect.  The  good 
sense  of  our  people  long  ago  recognized  this  fact,  and 
within  limits  which  are  respected  by  this  good  sense,  the 
comparative  license  of  an  election  is  endured,  because  it 
is  worth  what  it  costs. 

The  same  is  true  w^ith  regard  to  industrial  war.  It  is 
worth  all  that  it  costs  to  maintain  industrial  liberty. 
So  far  as  individual  interests  are  concerned,  those  who 
find  themselves  weak  under  liberty  may  be  sure  that 
they  would  find  themselves  very  much  weaker  under  any 
system  of  legal  regulation.  That,  however,  is  a  com- 
paratively unimportant  consideration.  The  most  im- 
portant consideration  is  that  the  industrial  war  is  solving 
questions  which  can  never  be  solved  in  any  other 
way. 

We  are  told,  indeed,  that  they  can  be  solved  otherwise; 
some  say  by  science,  others  by  ethics  and  religion,  others 
by  the  specific  prescribed  by  some  social  philosopher. 
In  regard  to  all  such  propositions  we  may  observe  at 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?         237 

once  that,  although  the  philosophers  and  literary  men 
should  reach,  by  their  discussion,  a  unanimous  conclusion 
as  to  the  principles  of  social  dissolution  and  reconstruc- 
tion, the  men  of  this  age  will  never  put  their  inheritance 
of  institutions  and  property  in  voluntary  and  unneces- 
sary liquidation.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  there  are 
millions  of  people  in  the  United  States  who  do  not  know 
what  the  literary  disputants  and  the  various  learned 
societies  are  talking  about.  The  latter  are  led  by  their 
knowledge  of  the  movement  among  themselves  to  judge 
of  the  effect  on  all  outsiders,  whereas  the  two  are  related 
very  much  like  the  ripples  on  the  surface  of  the  ocean 
and  the  great  currents  at  its  depths. 

Then,  again,  even  within  the  limits  of  the  discussion, 
it  may  become  plain  to  anyone  who  will  take  up  and 
compare  any  two  articles  on  this  subject  of  industrial 
war  that  the  writers  are  not  agreed  as  to  the  fundamental 
assumptions  which  constitute  the  root  and  stock  of  their 
respective  positions.  For  instance,  when  they  talk  about 
the  labor  question,  they  do  not  agree  as  to  what  makes 
the  rate  of  wages.  But  how  is  it  possible  to  advance  a 
step  in  the  discussion  of  any  question  about  employers 
and  employed  without  a  definite  doctrine  of  what  it  is 
that  makes  the  rate  of  wages .^  In  the  discussions  about 
railroads  it  is  constantly  assumed  that  there  is  some 
"cost"  which  can  be  taken  as  a  basis  for  the  definition 
of  fair  and  reasonable  rates.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
stoutly  asserted  that  cost  in  this  sense  is  a  myth,  and 
that  no  cost  can  be  determined  which  will  serve  as  a 
basis  for  any  such  computation.  How  can  there  be  any 
deliberative  solution  of  a  practical  question  as  to  what 
railroads  and  shippers  and  legislators  respectively  ought 
to  do,  with  such  discord  on  the  very  first  notions  about 
the  relations  of  the  parties  to  each  other  inside  the  indus- 


238     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

trial  organization?  Again,  in  the  discussion  about  trusts 
it  is  asserted  that  trusts  adopt  an  arbitrary  capitahza- 
tion  and  then  fix  the  prices  of  their  products  at  such 
rates  as  to  pay  dividends  on  the  paper  capital.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  asserted  that  there  are  laws  of  the  market 
which  are  imperative  in  their  action  and  which  make  it 
utterly  impossible  for  anybody  to  do  that.  In  fact,  the 
whole  discussion  revolves  around  this  issue,  without 
ever  bringing  it  out  as  a  definite,  independent  subject  of 
debate.  One  or  the  other  view  is  assumed  implicitly,  and 
the  discussion  moves  over  secondary  and  derived  appli- 
cations, while  any  chance  of  clearing  the  matter  up  is 
diminished  by  the  odium  which  is  imported  into  the 
discussion. 

Indeed,  there  is  another  and  still  more  fundamental 
difficulty  than  that  last  noticed.  These  questions  all 
finally  reach  down  to  the  notion  which  we  entertain  of 
the  social  organization  and  the  facts  as  to  what  human 
society  is.  All  schools  of  opinion  talk  about  "nature," 
or  what  is  "natural,"  and  all  of  them  ridicule  each  other's 
pretensions  to  know  or  to  use  the  real  natural  order.  It 
is  here,  in  fact,  that  the  great  difficulty  lies  for  any  delib- 
erative or  theoretical  solution  of  social  questions.  Our 
age  has  inherited  the  ruins  of  a  half-dozen  old  philosophies 
and  has  invented  a  number  of  new  ones.  Each  deduces 
an  explanation  of  the  social  order  from  its  own  grand 
premises  and  an  independent  social  science  with  its  own 
guarantees  does  not  exist.  This  does  not  stop  the  dis- 
cussion, it  only  makes  it  all  the  more  lively;  but  w^hen 
one  of  us  states  his  views,  you  can  see  that  he  is  only 
rehearsing  the  platform  of  his  school;  and  one  who  is 
well  up  in  the  doctrines  of  the  schools  can  save  time  if 
each  disputant  will  only  say:  I  am  a  Comtist;  I  am  a 
Darwinian;   I   am   an   evangelical    Christian;   I   am    an 


DO   WE   WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?         239 

economist  of  the  historical  school,  and  so  on.     He  knows 
all  the  rest  if  he  has  seen  the  label. 

Far  be  it  from  me  now  to  deride  science  in  this  field 
of  study.  My  point  is  that  we  cannot  wait  for  science 
to  work  out  its  results,  because  we  must  live  to-day 
and  to-morrow,  and  the  day  when  public  opinion  will 
be  founded  on  correct  notions  of  the  order  of  society, 
reduced  to  commonplace,  and  ingrained  into  the  common 
mind,  is  at  an  indefinite  distance;  and  that  therefore,  in 
the  meantime,  the  thing  to  do  is  to  abstain  from  empir- 
ical undertakings  and  to  let  the  problems  solve  them- 
selves under  Hberty,  no  matter  if  the  process  be  attended 
by  industrial  war. 

The  industrial  war  is,  in  great  measure,  the  entirely 
inevitable  means  by  which  redistributions  of  capital  and 
labor  are  brought  about.  We  boast  very  often  about  the^ 
modern  achievements,  without  noticing  the  incidental 
effects  which  are  not  all  pleasant.  The  world-wide 
organization  is  necessarily  automatic  and  impersonal; 
that  makes  it  mechanical  and  unfeeling  in  action.  One 
of  us  is  pursuing  in  peace  and  honesty  the  occupation  to 
which  he  has  become  accustomed ;  he  asks  nothing  better 
than  to  live  his  life  out  in  modest  and  contented  circum- 
stances, but  on  the  lines  to  which  he  has  become  accus- 
tomed. Formerly  he  could  do  it.  It  has  become  one  of 
the  commonest  experiences  for  such  a  man,  no  matter 
what  his  occupation  or  social  position  may  be,  to  find 
that  he  must  change  his  occupation,  or  his  investments, 
or  his  methods;  forfeit  his  acquired  skill,  change  his 
abode,  acquire  new  habits,  and  seek  other  means  of  live- 
lihood. He  will  be  very  apt  to  find  that  the  first  warning 
of  this  comes  in  the  shape  of  a  reduction  in  the  price  of 
his  product,  or  in  his  dividends,  or  his  salary,  or  his  pro- 
fessional income,  or  his  wages.     He  resents  the  change 


240     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  resists  it  as  long  as  he  can,  and  this  resistance  takes 
the  form  of  a  battle  with  the  members  of  that  social 
group  nearest  to  his  own,  to  whose  voluntary  human 
action  he  attributes  that  injury  to  his  own  interest  which 
is  really  due  to  "natural  causes."  Hence  landlords  and 
tenants,  borrowers  and  lenders,  producers  and  consumers, 
shippers  and  transporters,  employers  and  employees  are 
pushed  against  one  another  in  collisions  which  are  noth- 
ing but  the  social  manifestation  of  great  changes  in  the 
currents  of  trade  and  in  the  organization  of  production. 
Many  railroad  wars  are  interpreted  as  efforts  of  railroad 
managers  to  force  trade  into  certain  places,  when  they 
are  really  symptoms  of  the  tendency  of  trade  to  certain 
places  —  a  tendency  which  makes  itself  felt  by  the  trans- 
porters in  the  first  place  and  is  transmitted  by  them  to 
the  local  interests.  In  all  such  cases  the  rational  thing 
to  do  would  be  to  investigate  the  real  significance  of  the 
war,  but  such  an  investigation  has  to  contend,  not  only 
with  the  obscurity  of  the  matter  itself  and  the  inade- 
quacy of  our  scientific  attainments  for  the  task,  but  also 
with  various  developments  of  local  pride  and  personal 
vanity,  the  worst  lions  which  ever  rise  to  bar  the  way 
of  a  labor  bureau  or  a  railroad  commission.  In  the 
absence  of  such  investigation,  however,  one  thing  is  rea- 
sonably certain:  that  is,  that  any  interference  which 
would  stop  the  war  by  enabling  any  party  to  escape  for 
the  time  being  the  irksome  change  which  is  forced  upon 
it  by  economic  changes  is  sure  to  produce  nothing  but 
greater  misery  under  a  renewed  and  intenser  necessity 
at  a  later  time.  That  is  the  dilemma  which  repeats 
itself  over  and  over  again  in  the  social  developments  of 
our  time  and  brings  up  one  after  another  of  these  "great 
social  questions."  If  we  go  on  we  can  see  plainly  before 
us  that  we  have  to  encounter  a  tlireatening  social  peril. 


DO  WE   WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?  241 

We  stop  or  try  to  turn  back  in  order  to  avoid  it;  then 
we  find  either  that  it  is  impossible  to  turn  back  or  that, 
if  we  do,  we  shall  suffer  still  worse. 

The  irksomeness  of  industrial  changes  as  an  inevitable 
attendant  of  intense  industrial  activity  such  as  we  live 
under  is  a  subject  which  would  form  an  important  chap- 
ter in  some  new  popular  ethics.  We  have  been  taught 
for  a  century  that  everything  ought  to  go  on  with  con- 
current results,  contributing  to  our  enjoyment  and 
satisfaction,  without  drawbacks  of  any  kind;  and  those 
theories  of  social  facts  are  always  popular  and  are 
eagerly  accepted  which  pretend  to  show  that  all  things 
concur  to  make  it  nice  and  easy  for  us  here.  Industrial 
war  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  adopting  a  notion  so  sweet 
and  seductive,  but  so  false  to  all  the  facts.  Industrial 
war  is  a  symptom  of  the  social  changes  produced  by  the 
seething  chaos  into  which  all  industrial  relations  have 
been  thrown  by  great  modern  inventions.  We  want  to 
develop  the  symptoms;  we  do  not  want  to  suppress 
them. 

There  is  another  feature  of  the  industrial  war  which  is 
of  immense  importance  —  its  political   side.     What  we^ 
call  modern  progress  is  to  a  great  extent  an  effect  of  the 
extension  of  population  from  the  crowded  countries  of 
Europe  to  the  outlying  continents,  especially  America; 
it  is  also  an  effect  of  the  great  inventions.     The  former"" 
provided  more  land;  the  latter  increased  power  over  the 
land  acre  by  acre.     The  social  effect  of  these  two  things 
has  been  the  emancipation  of  the  classes  which  had  neither 
land   nor   capital.     These   forces   have   undermined   the 
privileges  of  the  classes  which  had  the  advantage  under 
the  mediaeval  system.     They  have  modified  class  differ-, 
ences  and  brought  about  comparative  equality.     Polit- 
ically,   they   have   given    the   advantage   to    democratic 


242     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

forms  and  have  carried  power  over  to  the  "masses"; 
that  is,  to  the  classes  powerful  by  numbers. 

It  is  impossible  in  this  place  to  trace  the  immeasurable 
social  effects  which  are  in  the  way  of  development,  much 
less  to  show  how  mistaken  is  the  received  opinion  about 
the  causes  of  the  social  phenomena  which  we  see  about  us, 
whose  development  has  been  so  greatly  accelerated  during 
the  nineteenth  century.  No  one  can  be  blind  to  the 
interplay  of  political  power  and  economic  interest  in  the 
industrial  war.  Socialism  is  nothing  but  a  phase  of  that 
relation  of  the  parts  of  the  social  organization,  and  its 
self-satisfied  parading  of  itself  as  being  at  once  the  cause 
and  the  arbiter  of  the  new  social  growth  is  among  the 
humorous  features  of  the  situation. 

It  is  inevitable,  however,  that  the  classes  which  con- 
stitute the  masses  should  go  on  to  win  all  the  power 
which  is  thrown  into  their  hands  by  the  facts  of  the 
situation.  In  the  long  run  this  social  antagonism,  like 
those  which  have  preceded  it,  will  be  reduced  to  new 
harmony;  but  never  by  the  wit  of  man,  only  by  the  work- 
ing out  of  the  forces.  A  movement  so  vast  and  so  new 
will  have  to  construct  its  own  institutions.  It  is  vain  to 
speculate  as  to  what  they  will  be.  Such  a  movement  will, 
of  course,  be  attended  by  a  vast  chorus  of  bystanders; 
some  shouting  in  honor  of  its  triumph,  some  asserting 
that  they  always  predicted  it,  an  immense  number  claim- 
ing that  they  brought  it  about,  some  shaking  their  heads 
over  it  and  predicting  disaster.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
not  sound  philosophy  to  say  that  all  other  forces  should 
be  withdrawn  and  that  the  social  revolution  should  go 
on  without  hindrance.  No  revolution  is  healthful  and 
sound  which  does  not  contain  all  the  elements,  and  the 
conservative  elements  must  be  included  in  their  full 
force.     How  then  can  we  have  industrial  peace?     Wliy 


DO  WE  WANT  INDUSTRIAL  PEACE?         US 

should  we  not  have  industrial  war?  Industrial  war  is 
a  sign  of  vigor  in  society.  It  contains  a  promise  of  a 
sound  solution.  It  is  not  possible  to  stop  it  if  all  the 
philosophers  and  statesmen  in  the  world  should  agree 
to  try  it;  and  it  will  be  wise  philosophy  and  statesman- 
ship not  to  try. 


ON  THE   CASE  OF  A  CERTAIN  MAN 
WHO  IS  NEVER  THOUGHT  OF 


XI 

ON  THE  CASE  OF  A  CERTAIN  MAN  WHO 
IS  NEVER  THOUGHT  OF 

[  1884  ] 

^T^HE  type  and  formula  of  most  schemes  of  philan- 
^  thropy  or  humanitarianism  is  this:  A  and  B  put 
their  heads  together  to  decide  what  C  shall  be  made  to 
do  for  D.  The  radical  vice  of  all  these  schemes,  from 
a  sociological  point  of  view,  is  that  C  is  not  allowed  a 
voice  in  the  matter,  and  his  position,  character,  and  inter- 
ests, as  well  as  the  ultimate  effects  on  society  through 
C's  interests,  are  entirely  overlooked.  I  call  C  the 
Forgotten  Man.  For  once  let  us  look  him  up  and  con- 
sider his  case,  for  the  characteristic  of  all  social  doctors 
is  that  they  fix  their  minds  on  some  man  or  group 
of  men  whose  case  appeals  to  the  sympathies  and 
the  imagination,  and  they  plan  remedies  addressed  to  the 
particular  trouble;  they  do  not  understand  that  all  the 
parts  of  society  hold  together  and  that  forces  which  are 
set  in  action  act  and  react  throughout  the  whole  organism 
until  an  equilibrium  is  produced  by  a  readjustment  of 
all  interests  and  rights.  They  therefore  ignore  entirely 
the  source  from  which  they  must  draw  all  the  energy 
which  they  employ  in  their  remedies,  and  they  ignore 
all  the  effects  on  other  members  of  society  than  the  ones 
they  have  in  view.  They  are  always  under  the  dominion 
of  the  superstition  of  government,  and  forgetting  that  a 
government  produces  nothing  at  all,  they  leave  out  of 
sight  the  first  fact  to  be  remembered  in  all  social  dis- 

[247] 


248     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

cussion  —  that  the  state  cannot  get  a  cent  for  any  man 
without  taking  it  from  some  other  man,  and  this  latter 
must  be  a  man  who  has  produced  and  saved  it.  This 
latter  is  the  Forgotten  Man. 

The  friends  of  humanity  start  out  with  certain  benev- 
olent feelings  towards  *'the  poor,"  ''the  weak,"  "the 
laborers,"  and  others  of  whom  they  make  pets.  They 
generalize  these  classes  and  render  them  impersonal,  and 
so  constitute  the  classes  into  social  pets.  They  turn  to 
other  classes  and  appeal  to  sympathy  and  generosity  and 
to  all  the  other  noble  sentiments  of  the  human  heart. 
Action  in  the  line  proposed  consists  in  a  transfer  of 
capital  from  the  better  off  to  the  worse  off.  Capital, 
however,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  force  by  which  civiliza- 
tion is  maintained  and  carried  on.  The  same  piece  of 
capital  cannot  be  used  in  two  ways.  Every  bit  of  capital, 
therefore,  which  is  given  to  a  shiftless  and  inefficient 
member  of  society  who  makes  no  return  for  it  is  diverted 
from  a  reproductive  use;  but  if  it  was  put  to  reproductive 
use,  it  would  have  to  be  granted  in  wages  to  an  efficient 
and  productive  laborer.  Hence  the  real  sufferer  by  that 
kind  of  benevolence  which  consists  in  an  expenditure  of 
capital  to  protect  the  good-for-nothing  is  the  industrious 
laborer.  The  latter,  however,  is  never  thought  of  in 
this  connection.  It  is  assumed  that  he  is  provided  for 
and  out  of  the  account.  Such  a  notion  only  shows  how 
little  true  notions  of  political  economy  have  as  yet  become 
popularized.  There  is  an  almost  invincible  prejudice 
that  a  man  who  gives  a  dollar  to  a  beggar  is  generous  and 
kind-hearted,  but  that  a  man  who  refuses  the  beggar  and 
puts  the  dollar  in  a  savings-bank  is  stingy  and  mean. 
The  former  is  putting  capital  where  it  is  very  sure  to  be 
wasted,  and  where  it  will  be  a  kind  of  seed  for  a  long  suc- 
cession of  future  dollars,  which  must  be  wasted  to  ward 


ON  THE   CASE  OF  A  CERTAIN   MAN         249 

off  a  greater  strain  on  the  sympathies  than  would  have 
been  occasioned  by  a  refusal  in  the  first  place.  Inasmuch 
as  the  dollar  might  have  been  turned  into  capital  and 
given  to  a  laborer  who,  while  earning  it,  would  have 
reproduced  it,  it  must  be  regarded  as  taken  from  the 
latter.  When  a  millionaire  gives  a  dollar  to  a  beggar, 
the  gain  of  utility  to  the  beggar  is  enormous  and  the  loss 
of  utility  to  the  millionaire  is  insignificant.  Generally 
the  discussion  is  allowed  to  rest  there.  But  if  the  mil- 
lionaire makes  capital  of  the  dollar,  it  must  go  upon 
the  labor  market  as  a  demand  for  productive  services. 
Hence  there  is  another  party  in  interest  —  the  person 
who  supplies  productive  services.  There  always  are  two 
parties.  The  second  one  is  always  the  Forgotten  Man, 
and  anyone  who  wants  to  understand  truly  the  matter 
in  question  must  go  and  search  for  the  Forgotten  Man. 
He  will  be  found  to  be  worthy,  industrious,  independent, 
and  self-supporting.  He  is  not,  technically,  "poor"  or 
"weak";  he  minds  his  own  business  and  makes  no  com- 
plaint. Consequently  the  philanthropists  never  think  of 
him  and  trample  on  him. 

We  hear  a  great  deal  of  schemes  for  "improving  the 
condition  of  the  working-man."  In  the  United  States 
the  farther  down  we  go  in  the  grade  of  labor,  the  greater 
is  the  advantage  which  the  laborer  has  over  the  higher 
classes.  A  hod-carrier  or  digger  here  can,  by  one  day's 
labor,  command  many  times  more  days'  labor  of  a  car- 
penter, surveyor,  bookkeeper,  or  doctor  than  an  unskilled 
laborer  in  Europe  could  command  by  one  day's  labor. 
The  same  is  true,  in  a  less  degree,  of  the  carpenter,  as 
compared  with  the  bookkeeper,  surveyor,  and  doctor. 
This  is  why  the  United  States  is  the  great  country  for 
the  unskilled  laborer.  The  economic  conditions  all  favor 
that  class.     There   is  a  great  continent   to  be   subdued 


250     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  there  is  a  fertile  soil  available  to  labor,  with  scarcely 
any  need  of  capital.  Hence  the  people  who  have  the 
strong  arms  have  what  is  most  needed,  and  if  it  were 
not  for  social  consideration,  higher  education  would  not 
pay.  Such  being  the  case,  the  working-man  needs  no 
improvement  in  his  condition  except  to  be  freed  from  the 
parasites  who  are  living  on  him.  All  schemes  for  patron- 
izing *'the  working  classes"  savor  of  condescension. 
They  are  impertinent  and  out  of  place  in  this  free  democ- 
racy. There  is  not,  in  fact,  any  such  state  of  things 
or  any  such  relation  as  would  make  projects  of  this 
kind  appropriate.  Such  projects  demoralize  both  parties, 
flattering  the  vanity  of  one  and  undermining  the  self- 
respect  of  the  other. 

For  our  present  purpose  it  is  most  important  to  notice 
that  if  we  lift  any  man  up  we  must  have  a  fulcrum  or 
point  of  reaction.  In  society  that  means  that  to  lift 
one  man  up  we  push  another  down.  The  schemes  for 
improving  the  condition  of  the  working  classes  interfere 
in  the  competition  of  workmen  with  each  other.  The 
beneficiaries  are  selected  by  favoritism  and  are  apt  to 
be  those  who  have  recommended  themselves  to  the 
friends  of  humanity  by  language  or  conduct  which  does 
not  betoken  independence  and  energy.  Those  who  suffer 
a  corresponding  depression  by  the  interference  are  the 
independent  and  self-reliant,  who  once  more  are  forgotten 
or  passed  over;  and  the  friends  of  humanity  once  more 
appear,  in  their  zeal  to  help  somebody,  to  be  trampling 
on  those  who  are  trying  to  help  themselves. 

Trades-unions  adopt  various  devices  for  raising  wages, 
and  those  who  give  their  time  to  philanthropy  are  inter- 
ested in  these  devices  and  wish  them  success.  They 
fix  their  minds  entirely  on  the  workmen  for  the  time  being 
in  the  trade  and  do  not  take  note  of  any  other  icorkmen 


ON  THE  CASE  OF  A  CERTAIN  MAN  251 

as  interested  in  the  matter.  It  is  supposed  that  the 
fight  is  between  the  workmen  and  their  employers,  and 
it  is  beheved  that  one  can  give  sympathy  in  that  contest 
to  the  workrden  without  feehng  responsibihty  for  any- 
thing farther.  It  is  soon  seen,  however,  that  the  em- 
ployer adds  the  trades-union  and  strike  risk  to  the  other 
risks  of  his  business  and  settles  down  to  it  philosophically 
because  he  has  passed  the  loss  along  on  the  public.  It 
then  appears  that  the  public  wealth  has  been  diminished 
and  that  the  danger  of  a  trade  war,  like  the  danger  of  a 
revolution,  is  a  constant  reduction  of  the  well-being  of 
all.  So  far,  however,  we  have  seen  only  things  which 
could  lower  wages  —  nothing  which  could  raise  them. 
The  employer  is  worried,  but  that  does  not  raise  wages. 
The  public  loses,  but  the  loss  goes  to  cover  extra  risk, 
and  that  does  not  raise  wages. 

Aside  from  legitimate  and  economic  means, ^  a  trades- 
union  raises  wages  by  restricting  the  number  of  appren- 
tices who  may  be  taken  into  the  trade.  This  device 
acts  directly  on  the  supply  of  laborers,  and  that  produces 
effects  on  wages.  If,  however,  the  number  of  appren- 
tices is  limited,  some  are  kept  out  who  want  to  get  in. 
Those  who  are  in  have,  therefore,  made  a  monopoly  and 
constituted  themselves  a  privileged  class  on  a  basis 
exactly  analogous  to  that  of  the  old  privileged  aris- 
tocracies. But  whatever  is  gained  by  this  arrangement 
for  those  who  are  in  is  won  at  a  greater  loss  to  those 
who  are  kept  out.  Hence  it  is  not  upon  the  masters  nor 
upon  the  public  that  trades-unions  exert  the  pressure  by 
which  they  raise  wages;  it  is  upon  other  persons  of  the 
labor  class  who  want  to  get  into  the  trades,  but,  not 
being  able  to  do  so,  are  pushed  down  into  the  unskilled 
labor  class.     These  persons,  however,  are  passed  by  en- 

^  Noted  in  Chapter  VI  of  Sumner's  What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other. 


252     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

tirely  without  notice  in  all  the  discussions  about  trades- 
unions.  They  are  the  Forgotten  Men.  But  since  they 
want  to  get  into  the  trade  and  win  their  living  in  it,  it 
is  fair  to  suppose  that  they  are  fit  for  it,  would  succeed 
at  it,  would  do  well  for  themselves  and  society  in  it;  that 
is  to  say,  that  of  all  persons  interested  or  concerned,  they 
most  deserve  our  sympathy  and  attention. 

The  cases  already  mentioned  involve  no  legislation. 
Society,  however,  maintains  police,  sheriffs,  and  various 
institutions,  the  object  of  which  is  to  protect  people 
against  themselves  —  that  is,  against  their  own  vices. 
Almost  all  legislative  effort  to  prevent  vice  is  really  pro- 
tective of  vice,  because  all  such  legislation  saves  the 
vicious  man  from  the  penalty  of  his  vice.  Nature's 
remedies  against  vice  are  terrible.  She  removes  the 
victims  without  pity.  A  drunkard  in  the  gutter  is  just 
where  he  ought  to  be,  according  to  the  fitness  and  tendency 
of  things.  Nature  has  set  up  in  him  the  process  of 
decline  and  dissolution  by  which  she  removes  things  which 
have  survived  their  usefulness.  Gambling  and  other  less 
mentionable  vices  carry  their  own  penalties  with  them. 

Now  we  never  can  annihilate  a  penalty.  AYe  can  only 
divert  it  from  the  head  of  the  man  who  has  incurred 
it  to  the  heads  of  others  who  have  not  incurred  it.  A 
vast  amount  of  "social  reform"  consists  in  just  this  oper- 
ation. The  consequence  is  that  those  who  have  gone 
astray,  being  relieved  from  nature's  fierce  discipline,  go 
on  to  worse,  and  that  there  is  a  constantly  heavier  burden 
for  the  others  to  bear.  AMio  are  the  others?  AYhen  we 
see  a  drunkard  in  the  gutter  we  pity  him.  If  a  policeman 
picks  him  up,  we  say  that  society  has  interfered  to  save 
him  from  perishing.  "Society"  is  a  fine  word,  and  it 
saves  us  the  trouble  of  thinking.  The  industrious  and 
sober  workman,  who  is  mulcted  of  a  percentage  of  his 


ON  THE   CASE  OF  A  CERTAIN  MAN         253 

day's  wages  to  pay  the  policeman,  is  the  one  who  bears 
the  penalty.  But  he  is  the  Forgotten  Man.  He  passes 
by  and  is  never  noticed,  because  he  has  behaved  himself, 
fulfilled  his  contracts,  and  asked  for  nothing. 

The  fallacy  of  all  prohibitory,  sumptuary,  and  moral  leg- 
islation is  the  same.  A  and  B  determine  to  be  teetotalers, 
which  is  often  a  wise  determination,  and  sometimes  a 
necessary  one.  If  A  and  B  are  moved  by  considerations 
which  seem  to  them  good,  that  is  enough.  But  A  and 
B  put  their  heads  together  to  get  a  law  passed  which 
shall  force  C  to  be  a  teetotaler  for  the  sake  of  D, 
who  is  in  danger  of  drinking  too  much.  There  is  no 
pressure  on  A  and  B.  They  are  having  their  own  way, 
and  they  like  it.  There  is  rarely  any  pressure  on  D. 
He  does  not  like  it,  and  evades  it.  The  pressure  all 
comes  on  C.  The  question  then  arises.  Who  is  C.^^  He 
is  the  man  who  wants  alcoholic  liquors  for  any  honest 
purpose  whatsoever,  who  would  use  his  liberty  without 
abusing  it,  who  would  occasion  no  public  question  and 
trouble  nobody  at  all.  He  is  the  Forgotten  Man  again, 
and  as  soon  as  he  is  drawn  from  his  obscurity  we  see  that 
he  is  just  what  each  one  of  us  ought  to  be. 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN 
FURTHER  CONSIDERED 


XII 

THE  CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN 
FURTHER  CONSIDERED 

[ 1884  ] 

nPHERE  is  a  beautiful  notion  afloat  in  our  literature 
-■-  and  in  the  minds  of  our  people  that  men  are  born 
to  certain  "natural  rights."  If  that  were  true,  there 
would  be  something  on  earth  which  was  got  for  nothing, 
and  this  world  would  not  be  the  place  it  is  at  all.  The 
fact  is,  that  there  is  no  right  whatever  inherited  by  man 
which  has  not  an  equivalent  and  corresponding  duty  by 
the  side  of  it.  The  rights,  advantages,  capital,  knowledge, 
and  all  other  goods  which  we  inherit  from  past  genera- 
tions have  been  won  by  the  struggles  and  sufferings  of 
past  generations;  and  the  fact  that  the  race  lives,  though 
men  die,  and  that  the  race  can  by  heredity  accumulate 
within  some  cycle  its  victories  over  nature,  is  one  of  the 
facts  which  make  civilization  possible.  The  struggles 
of  the  race  as  a  whole  produce  the  possessions  of  the  race 
as  a  whole.  Something  for  nothing  is  not  to  be  found 
on  earth. 

If  there  were  such  things  as  natural  rights,  the  ques- 
tion would  arise.  Against  whom  are  they  good.^  Who 
J.  has  the  corresponding  obligation  to  satisfy  these  rights  .f^ 
[  There  can  be  no  rights  against  nature,  except  to  get  out 
of  her  whatever  we  can,  which  is  only  the  fact  of  the 
struggle  for  existence  stated  over  again.  The  common 
assertion  is  that  the  rights  are  good  against  society; 
that  is,  that  society  is  bound  to  obtain  and  secure  them 

[257] 


258     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

for  the  persons  interested.  Society,  however,  is  only  the 
persons  interested  plus  some  other  persons;  and  as 
the  persons  interested  have  by  the  hypothesis  failed  to 
win  the  rights,  we  come  to  this,  that  natural  rights  are 
the  claims  which  certain  persons  have  by  prerogative 
against  some  other  persons.  Such  is  the  actual  interpre- 
tation in  practice  of  natural  rights  —  claims  which  some 
people  have  by  prerogative  on  other  people. 

This  theory  is  a  very  far-reaching  one,  and  of  course 
it  is  adequate  to  furnish  a  foundation  for  a  whole  social 
philosophy.  In  its  widest  extension  it  comes  to  mean 
that  if  any  man  finds  himself  uncomfortable  in  this  world 
it  must  be  somebody  else's  fault,  and  that  somebody  is 
bound  to  come  and  make  him  comfortable.  Now  the 
people  who  are  most  uncomfortable  in  this  world  —  for 
if  we  should  tell  all  our  troubles  it  would  not  be  found 
to  be  a  very  comfortable  world  for  anybody  —  are  those 
who  have  neglected  their  duties,  and  consequently  have 
failed  to  get  their  rights.  The  people  who  can  be  called 
upon  to  serve  the  uncomfortable  must  be  those  who  have 
done  their  duty,  as  the  world  goes,  tolerably  well.  Con- 
sequently the  doctrine  which  we  are  discussing  turns 
out  to  be  in  practice  only  a  scheme  for  making  injustice 
prevail  in  human  society  by  reversing  the  distribution 
of  rewards  and  punishments  between  those  who  have 
done  their  duty  and  those  who  have  not. 

We  are  constantly  preached  at  by  our  public  teachers 
as  if  respectable  people  were  to  blame  because  some 
people  are  not  respectable  —  as  if  the  man  who  has  done 
his  duty  in  his  own  sphere  was  responsible  in  some  way 
for  another  man  who  has  not  done  his  duty  in  his  sphere. 
There  are  relations  of  employer  and  employee  which 
need  to  be  regulated  by  compromise  and  treaty.  There 
are   sanitary   precautions   which   need   to   be    taken    in 


THE   CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN        259 

factories  and  houses.  There  are  precautions  against  fire 
which  are  necessary.  There  is  care  needed  that  children 
be  not  employed  too  young,  and  that  they  have  an  edu- 
cation. There  is  care4  needed  that  banks,  insurance 
companies,  and  railroads  be  well  managed,  and  that 
officers  do  not  abuse  their  trusts.  There  is  a  duty  in 
each  case  on  the  interested  parties  to  defend  their  own 
interest.  The  penalty  of  neglect  is  suffering.  The  sys- 
tem of  providing  for  these  things  by  boards  and  inspectors 
throws  the  cost  of  it,  not  on  the  interested  parties,  but 
on  the  tax-payers.  Some  of  them,  no  doubt,  are  the 
interested  parties,  and  they  may  consider  that  they  are 
exercising  the  proper  care  by  paying  taxes  to  support 
an  inspector.  If  so,  they  only  get  their  fair  deserts 
when  the  railroad  inspector  finds  out  that  a  bridge  is  not 
safe  after  it  is  broken  down,  or  when  the  bank  examiner 
comes  in  to  find  out  why  a  bank  failed  after  the  cashier 
has  stolen  all  the  funds.  The  real  victim  is  the  For- 
gotten Man  again  —  the  man  who  has  watched  his  own 
investments,  made  his  own  machinery  safe,  attended  to 
his  own  plumbing,  and  educated  his  own  children,  and 
who,  just  when  he  wants  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his  care, 
is  told  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  and  take  care  of  some  of 
his  negligent  neighbors,  or,  if  he  does  not  go,  to  pay  an 
inspector  to  go.  No  doubt  it  is  often  his  interest  to  go 
or  to  send,  rather  than  to  have  the  matter  neglected,  on 
account  of  his  own  connection  with  the  thing  neglected 
and  his  own  secondary  peril;  but  the  point  now  is,  that 
if  preaching  and  philosophizing  can  do  any  good  in  the 
premises,  it  is  all  wrong  to  preach  to  the  Forgotten  Man 
that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  and  remedy  other  people's  neglect. 
It  is  not  his  duty.  It  is  a  harsh  and  unjust  burden  which 
is  laid  upon  him,  and  it  is  only  the  more  unjust  because 
no  one  thinks  of  him  when  laying  the  burden  so  that  it 


260     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

falls  on  him.  The  exhortations  ought  to  be  expended  on 
the  negligent  —  that  they  take  care  of  themselves. 

It  is  an  especially  vicious  extension  of  the  false  doc- 
trine above  mentioned  that  criminals  have  some  sort  of 
a  right  against  or  claim  on  society.  Many  reformatory 
plans  are  based  on  a  doctrine  of  this  kind  when  they 
are  urged  upon  the  public  conscience.  A  criminal  is  a 
man  who,  instead  of  working  with  and  for  the  society, 
has  turned  against  it  and  become  destructive  and  inju- 
rious. His  punishment  means  that  society  rules  him 
out  of  its  membership  and  separates  him  from  its  asso- 
ciation, by  execution  or  imprisonment,  according  to  the 
gravity  of  his  offense.  He  has  no  claims  against  society 
at  all.  What  shall  be  done  with  him  is  a  question  of 
expediency  to  be  settled  in  view  of  the  interests  of  society 
—  that  is,  of  the  non-criminals.  The  French  \\Titers 
of  the  school  of  '48  used  to  represent  the  badness  of  the 
bad  men  as  the  fault  of  "society."  As  the  object  of 
this  statement  was  to  show  that  the  badness  of  the  bad 
men  was  not  the  fault  of  the  bad  men,  and  as  society 
contains  only  good  men  and  bad  men,  it  followed  that 
the  badness  of  the  bad  men  was  the  fault  of  the  good 
men.  On  that  theory  of  course  the  good  men  owed  a 
great  deal  to  the  bad  men  who  were  in  prison  and  at 
the  galleys  on  their  account.  If  we  do  not  admit  that 
theory,  it  behooves  us  to  remember  that  any  claim  which 
we  allow  to  the  criminal  against  the  "state"  is  only  so 
much  burden  laid  upon  those  who  have  never  cost  the 
State  anything  for  discipline  or  correction.  The  punish- 
ments of  society  are  just,  like  those  of  God  and  nature  — 
they  are  warnings  to  the  wrong-doer  to  reform  himself. 

W^hen  public  offices  are  to  be  filled  numerous  candi- 
dates at  once  appear.  Some  are  urged  on  the  ground 
that  they  are  poor,  or  cannot  earn  a  living,  or  want 


THE   CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN   MAN       261 

support  while  getting  an  education,  or  have  female 
relatives  dependent  on  them,  or  are  in  poor  health,  or 
belong  in  a  particular  district,  or  are  related  to  certain 
persons,  or  have  done  meritorious  service  in  some  other 
line  of  work  than  that  which  they  apply  to  do.  The 
abuses  of  the  public  service  are  to  be  condemned  on 
account  of  the  harm  to  the  public  interest,  but  there  is 
an  incidental  injustice  of  the  same  general  character 
with  that  which  we  are  discussing.  If  an  office  is  granted 
by  favoritism  or  for  any  personal  reason  to  A,  it  cannot 
be  given  to  B.  If  an  office  is  filled  by  a  person  who  is 
unfit  for  it,  he  always  keeps  out  somebody  somewhere 
who  is  fit  for  it;  that  is,  the  social  injustice  has  a  victim 
in  an  unknown  person  —  the  Forgotten  Man  —  and  he 
is  some  person  who  has  no  political  influence,  and  who 
has  known  no  way  in  which  to  secure  the  chances  of 
life  except  to  deserve  them.  He  is  passed  by  for  the 
noisy,  pushing,  importunate,  and  incompetent. 

I  have  said  elsewhere,  disparagingly,  something  about 
the  popular  rage  against  combined  capital,  corporations, 
corners,  selling  futures,  etc.  The  popular  rage  is  not 
without  reason,  but  it  is  sadly  misdirected,  and  the  real 
things  which  deserve  attack  are  thriving  all  the  time. 
The  greatest  social  evil  with  which  we  have  to  contend 
is  jobbery.  Whatever  there  is  in  legislative  charters, 
watering  stocks,  and  so  on  which  is  objectionable  comes 
under  the  head  of  jobbery.  Jobbery  is  any  scheme  which 
aims  to  gain,  not  by  the  legitimate  fruits  of  industry 
and  enterprise,  but  by  extorting  from  somebody  a  part 
of  his  product  under  guise  of  some  pretended  industrial 
undertaking.  Of  course  it  is  only  a  modification  when 
the  undertaking  in  question  has  some  legitimate  char- 
acter, but  the  occasion  is  used  to  graft  upon  it  devices  for 
obtaining  what  has  not  been  earned.    Jobbery  is  the  vice 


262     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

of  plutocracy,  and  it  is  the  especial  form  under  which 
plutocracy  corrupts  a  democratic  and  republican  form  of 
government.  The  United  States  is  deeply  afflicted  with 
it,  and  the  problem  of  civil  liberty  here  is  to  conquer  it. 
It  affects  everything  which  we  really  need  to  have  done 
to  such  an  extent  that  we  have  to  do  without  public 
objects  which  we  need  through  fear  of  jobbery.  Our 
public  buildings  are  jobs  —  not  always,  but  often.  They 
are  not  needed,  or  are  costly  beyond  all  necessity  or  even 
decent  luxury.  Internal  improvements  are  jobs.  They 
are  not  made  because  they  are  needed  to  meet  needs 
which  have  been  experienced.  They  are  made  to  serve 
private  ends,  often  incidentally  the  political  interests 
of  the  persons  who  vote  the  appropriations.  Pensions 
have  become  jobs.  In  England  pensions  used  to  be 
given  to  aristocrats,  because  aristocrats  had  political 
influence,  in  order  to  corrupt  them.  Here  pensions  are 
given  to  the  great  democratic  mass,  because  they  have 
political  power,  to  corrupt  them.  Instead  of  going  out 
where  there  is  plenty  of  land  and  making  a  farm  there, 
some  people  go  dow^n  under  the  Mississippi  River  to 
make  a  farm,  and  then  they  want  to  tax  all  the  people 
in  the  United  States  to  make  dikes  to  keep  the  river  off 
their  farms.  The  California  gold-miners  have  w^ashed 
out  gold  and  have  washed  the  dirt  down  into  the  rivers 
and  on  the  farms  below.  They  want  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment to  clean  out  the  rivers  now  and  restore  the  farms. 
The  silver-miners  found  their  product  declining  in  value 
and  they  got  the  Federal  Government  to  go  into  the 
market  and  buy  what  the  public  did  not  want,  in  order 
to  sustain,  as  they  hoped,  the  price  of  silver.  The  Fed- 
eral Government  is  called  upon  to  buy  or  hire  unsal- 
able ships,  to  build  canals  which  will  not  pay,  to  furnish 
capital  for  all  sorts  of  experiments,  and  to  provide  capital 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN       263 

for  enterprises  of  which  private  individuals  will  win  the 
profits.  All  this  is  called  "developing  our  resources," 
but  it  is,  in  truth,  the  great  plan  of  all  living  on  each 
other. 

The  greatest  job  of  all  is  a  protective  tariff.  It  in- 
cludes the  biggest  log-rolling  and  the  widest  corruption 
of  economic  and  political  ideas.  It  was  said  that  there 
would  be  a  rebellion  if  the  taxes  were  not  taken  off 
whisky  and  tobacco,  which  taxes  were  paid  into  the 
public  Treasury.  Just  then  the  importations  of  Sumatra 
tobacco  became  important  enough  to  affect  the  market. 
The  Connecticut  tobacco-growers  at  once  called  for  an 
import  duty  on  tobacco  which  would  keep  up  the  price 
of  their  product.  So  it  appears  that  if  the  tax  on  tobacco 
is  paid  to  the  Federal  Treasury  there  will  be  a  rebellion, 
but  if  it  is  paid  to  the  Connecticut  tobacco-raisers  there 
will  be  no  rebellion  at  all.  The  farmers  have  long  paid 
tribute  to  the  manufacturers;  now  the  manufacturing 
and  other  laborers  are  to  pay  tribute  to  the  farmers. 
The  system  is  made  more  comprehensive  and  complete 
and  we  are  all  living  on  each  other  more  than  ever. 

Now  the  plan  of  plundering  each  other  produces 
nothing.  It  only  wastes.  All  the  material  over  which 
the  protected  interests  wrangle  and  grab  must  be  got 
from  somebody  outside  of  their  circle.  The  talk  is  all 
about  the  American  laborer  and  American  industry,  but 
in  every  case  in  which  there  is  not  an  actual  produc- 
tion of  wealth  by  industry  there  are  two  laborers  and 
two  industries  to  be  considered  —  the  one  who  gets  and 
the  one  who  gives.  Every  protected  industry  has  to 
plead,  as  the  major  premise  of  its  argument,  that  any 
industry  which  does  not  pay  ought  to  be  carried  on  at 
the  expense  of  the  consumers  of  the  product,  and  as  its 
minor  premise,  that  the  industry  in  question  does  not 


264     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

pay;  that  is,  that  it  cannot  reproduce  a  capital  equal 
in  value  to  that  which  it  consumes  plus  the  current 
rate  of  profit.  Hence  every  such  industry  must  be  a 
parasite  on  some  other  industry.  What  is  the  other 
industry .f^  WTio  is  the  other  man?  This,  the  real  ques- 
tion, is  always  overlooked. 

In  all  jobbery  the  case  is  the  same.  There  is  a  victim 
somewhere  who  is  paying  for  it  all.  The  doors  of  waste 
and  extravagance  stand  open,  and  there  seems  to  be  a 
general  agreement  to  squander  and  spend.  It  all  belongs 
to  somebody.  There  is  somebody  who  had  to  contribute 
it  and  who  will  have  to  find  more.  Nothing  is  ever 
said  about  him.  Attention  is  all  absorbed  by  the  clam- 
orous interests,  the  importunate  petitioners,  the  plausible 
schemers,  the  pitiless  bores.  Now,  who  is  the  victim.'* 
He  is  the  Forgotten  Man.  If  we  go  to  find  him,  we  shall 
find  him  hard  at  work  tilling  the  soil  to  get  out  of  it  the 
lund  for  all  the  jobbery,  the  object  of  all  the  plunder, 
the  cost  of  all  the  economic  quackery,  and  the  pay  of 
all  the  politicians  and  statesmen  who  have  sacrificed  his 
interests  to  his  enemies.  We  shall  find  him  an  honest, 
sober,  industrious  citizen,  unknown  outside  his  little 
circle,  paying  his  debts  and  his  taxes,  supporting  the 
church  and  the  school,  reading  his  party  newspaper,  and 
cheering  for  his  pet  politician. 

We  must  not  overlook  the  fact  that  the  Forgotten 
Man  is  not  infrequently  a  woman.  I  have  before  me  a 
newspaper  which  contains  five  letters  from  corset-stitchers 
who  complain  that  they  cannot  earn  more  than  seventy- 
five  cents  a  day  with  a  machine  and  that  they  have  to 
provide  the  thread.  The  tax  on  the  grade  of  thread  used 
by  them  is  prohibitory  as  to  all  importation,  and  it  is 
the  corset-stitchers  who  have  to  pay  day  by  day  out  of 
their   time   and   labor   the   total  enhancement    of  price 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN       265 

due  to  the  tax.  Women  who  earn  their  own  living  prob- 
ably earn  on  an  average  seventy-five  cents  per  day  of 
ten  hours.  Twenty-four  minutes'  work  ought  to  buy  a 
spool  of  thread  at  the  retail  price,  if  the  American  work- 
woman were  allowed  to  exchange  her  labor  for  thread 
on  the  best  terms  that  the  art  and  commerce  of  to-day 
would  allow;  but  after  she  has  done  twenty-four  minutes' 
work  for  the  thread  she  is  forced  by  the  laws  of  her  country 
to  go  back  and  work  sixteen  minutes  longer  to  pay  the 
tax  —  that  is,  to  support  the  thread-mill.  The  thread- 
mill,  therefore,  is  not  an  institution  for  getting  thread 
for  the  American  people,  but  for  making  thread  harder  to 
get  than  it  would  be  if  there  were  no  such  institution. 

In  justification,  now,  of  an  arrangement  so  monstrously 
unjust  and  out  of  place  in  a  free  country,  it  is  said  that 
the  employes  in  the  thread-mill  get  high  wages  and  that, 
but  for  the  tax,  American  laborers  must  come  down  to 
the  low  wages  of  foreign  thread-makers.  It  is  not  true 
that  American  thread-makers  get  any  more  than  the 
market  rate  of  wages,  and  they  would  not  get  less  if  the 
tax  were  entirely  removed,  because  the  market  rate  of 
wages  in  the  United  States  would  be  controlled  then,  as 
it  is  now,  by  the  supply  and  demand  of  laborers  under 
the  natural  advantages  and  opportunities  of  industry  in 
this  country.  It  makes  a  great  impression  on  the 
imagination,  however,  to  go  to  a  manufacturing  town  and 
see  great  mills  and  a  crowd  of  operatives;  and  such  a 
sight  is  put  forward,  under  the  special  allegation  that  it 
would  not  exist  hut  for  a  "protective  tax,  as  a  proof  that 
protective  taxes  are  wise.  But  if  it  be  true  that  the 
thread-mill  would  not  exist  but  for  the  tax,  then  how 
can  we  form  a  judgment  as  to  whether  the  protective 
system  is  wise  or  not  unless  we  call  to  mind  all  the  seam- 
stresses,  washer-women,   servants,   factory-hands,   sales- 


m6     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

women,  teachers,  and  laborers'  wives  and  daughters, 
scattered  in  the  garrets  and  tenements  of  great  cities  and 
in  cottages  all  over  the  country,  who  are  paying  the  tax 
which  keeps  the  mill  going  and  pays  the  extra  wages? 
If  the  sewing-women,  teachers,  servants,  and  washer- 
women could  once  be  collected  over  against  the  thread- 
mill,  then  some  inferences  could  be  drawn  which  would 
be  worth  something.  Then  some  light  might  be  thrown 
upon  the  obstinate  fallacy  of  *' creating  an  industry"  and 
we  might  begin  to  understand  the  difference  between 
wanting  thread  and  wanting  a  thread-mill.  Some  nations 
spend  capital  on  great  palaces,  others  on  standing  armies, 
others  on  iron-clad  ships  of  war.  Those  things  are  all 
glorious  and  strike  the  imagination  with  gi-eat  force 
when  they  are  seen,  but  no  one  doubts  that  they  make 
life  harder  for  the  scattered  insignificant  peasants  and 
laborers  who  have  to  pay  for  them  all.  They  "support 
a  great  many  people,"  they  "make  work,"  they  "give 
employment  to  other  industries."  We  Americans  have 
no  palaces,  armies,  or  iron-clads,  but  we  spend  our  earn- 
ings on  protected  industries.  A  big  protected  factory, 
if  it  really  needs  the  protection  for  its  support,  is  a 
heavier  load  for  the  Forgotten  Men  and  Women  than 
an  iron-clad  ship  of  war  in  time  of  peace. 

It  is  plain  that  the  Forgotten  Man  and  the  Forgotten 
Woman  are  the  real  productive  strength  of  the  country. 
The  Forgotten  Man  works  and  votes  —  generally  he 
prays  —  but  his  chief  business  in  life  is  to  pay.  His 
name  never  gets  into  the  newspapers  except  when  he 
marries  or  dies.  He  is  an  obscure  man.  He  may  grumble 
sometimes  to  his  wife,  but  he  does  not  frequent  the 
grocery,  and  he  does  not  talk  politics  at  the  tavern. 
So  he  is  forgotten.  Yet  who  is  there  whom  the  states- 
man, economist,  and  social  philosopher  ought  to  think 


THE  CASE  OF  THE  FORGOTTEN  MAN       267 

of  before  this  man?  If  any  student  of  social  science 
comes  to  appreciate  the  case  of  the  Forgotten  Man,  he 
will  become  an  unflinching  advocate  of  strict  scientific 
thinking  in  sociology  and  a  hard-hearted  skeptic  as  re- 
gards any  scheme  of  social  amelioration.  He  will  always 
want  to  know,  Who  and  where  is  the  Forgotten  Man  in 
this  case,  who  will  have  to  pay  for  it  all? 

The  Forgotten  Man  is  not  a  pauper.  It  belongs  to  his 
character  to  save  something.  Hence  he  is  a  capitalist, 
though  never  a  great  one.  He  is  a  "poor"  man  in  the 
popular  sense  of  the  word,  but  not  in  a  correct  sense. 
In  fact,  one  of  the  most  constant  and  trustworthy  signs 
that  the  Forgotten  Man  is  in  danger  of  a  new  assault 
is  that  "the  poor  man"  is  brought  into  the  discussion. 
Since  the  Forgotten  Man  has  some  capital,  anyone  who 
cares  for  his  interest  will  try  to  make  capital  secure 
by  securing  the  inviolability  of  contracts,  the  stability  of 
currency,  and  the  firmness  of  credit.  Anyone,  therefore, 
who  cares  for  the  Forgotten  Man  will  be  sure  to  be  con- 
sidered a  friend  of  the  capitalist  and  an  enemy  of  the 
poor  man. 

It  is  the  Forgotten  Man  who  is  threatened  by  every 
extension  of  the  paternal  theory  of  government.  It  is 
he  who  must  work  and  pay.  When,  therefore,  the 
statesmen  and  social  philosophers  sit  down  to  think 
what  the  state  can  do  or  ought  to  do,  they  really  mean 
to  decide  what  the  Forgotten  Man  shall  do.  What  the 
Forgotten  Man  wants,  therefore,  is  a  fuller  realization 
of  constitutional  liberty.  He  is  suffering  from  the  fact 
that  there  are  yet  mixed  in  our  institutions  mediaeval 
theories  of  protection,  regulation,  and  authority,  and 
modern  theories  of  independence  and  individual  liberty 
and  responsibility.  The  consequence  of  this  mixed  state 
of  things  is  that  those  who  are  clever  enough  to  get  into 


268     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

control  use  the  paternal  theory  by  which  to  measure  their 
own  rights  —  that  is,  they  assume  privileges  —  and  they 
use  the  theory  of  liberty  to  measure  their  own  duties; 
that  is,  when  it  comes  to  the  duties,  they  want  to  be  "let 
alone."  The  Forgotten  Man  never  gets  into  control. 
He  has  to  pay  both  ways.  His  rights  are  measured  to 
him  by  the  theory  of  liberty  —  that  is,  he  has  only  such 
as  he  can  conquer;  his  duties  are  measured  to  him  on 
the  paternal  theory  —  that  is,  he  must  discharge  all 
which  are  laid  upon  him,  as  is  the  fortune  of  parents. 
In  a  paternal  relation  there  are  always  two  parties,  a 
father  and  a  child;  and  when  we  use  the  paternal  rela- 
tion metaphorically,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  know 
who  is  to  be  father  and  who  is  to  be  child.  The  role  of 
parent  falls  always  to  the  Forgotten  Man.  What  he 
wants,  therefore,  is  that  ambiguities  in  our  institutions 
be  cleared  up  and  that  liberty  be  more  fully  realized. 

It  behooves  any  economist  or  social  philosopher, 
whatever  be  the  grade  of  his  orthodoxy,  who  proposes 
to  enlarge  the  sphere  of  the  "state,"  or  to  take  any  steps 
whatever  having  in  view  the  welfare  of  any  class  whatever, 
to  pursue  the  analysis  of  the  social  effects  of  his  propo- 
sition until  he  finds  that  other  group  whose  interests 
must  be  curtailed  or  whose  energies  must  be  placed  under 
contribution  by  the  course  of  action  which  he  proposes, 
and  he  cannot  maintain  his  proposition  until  he  has 
demonstrated  that  it  will  be  more  advantageous,  both 
quantitatively  and  qualitatively,  to  those  who  must  bear 
the  weight  of  it  than  complete  non-interference  by  the 
state  with  the  relations  of  the  parties  in  question. 


THE  PROPOSED   DUAL  ORGANIZATION 
OF  MANKIND 


XIII 

THE  PROPOSED  DUAL  ORGANIZATION  OF 

MANKIND  1 

[ 1896  ] 

RODBERTUS  turned  aside  from  his  studies  of  taxa- 
tion in  the  Roman  Empire,  which  had  shown  him 
the  Roman  city  exhausting  and  consuming  the  rest  of 
the  Roman  world,  to  express  the  opinion  that  the  history 
of  the  last  three  hundred  years  is  a  story  of  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  outlying  continents  by  the  old  centers  of 
civilization.  This  was  an  attempt  to  describe  summarily 
the  significance  for  the  human  race  of  the  opening  up  of 
new  regions  by  exploration  and  colonization.  The  period 
during  which  the  influences  of  the  new  extension  of 
civilized  settlements  has  been  at  work  is  so  short  that  it 
is  impossible  to  define  with  confidence  its  ultimate  effects 
on  the  relation  of  the  parts  of  the  race  to  each  other 
and  on  the  fortunes  of  the  race  as  a  whole.  Recent 
events,  however,  have  forced  this  subject  upon  our  atten- 
tion, for  the  "Monroe  doctrine,"  as  it  has  been  recently 
aflSrmed  and  construed,  would  be  nothing  less  than  a 
doctrine  and  policy  which  some  people  are  disposed  to 
force  upon  the  new  organization  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
globe  produced  by  the  discovery  and  settlement  of  the 
outlying  continents.  If  anybody  claims  to  be  able  now 
to  take  control  of  this  most  portentous  evolution  in  the 
life  of  the  human  race,  and  to  dictate  the  course  which 
it  is  to  take,  it  behooves  us  all  to  verify  the  doctrine  and 
to  test  the  programme  of  policy  proposed. 

1  Reprinted  from  Appleton's  Popular  Science  Monthly.     Copyright,  1896, 
by  D.  Appleton  and  Company. 

[271] 


272     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

The  era  of  geographical  discovery  and  adventure 
passes  for  an  era  of  glorious  achievement  by  men;  yet  to 
what  end  did  they  care  to  know  and  reach  the  outlying 
parts  of  the  earth?  One  motive  which  led  them  was  the 
gain  of  commerce.  The  products  of  the  Indies  could  be 
obtained  in  no  other  way,  and  the  trade  for  them  was  as 
old  as  civilization.  The  other  great  motive  was  to  obtain 
new  supplies  of  gold  and  silver,  under  an  exaggerated 
and  fallacious  notion  of  the  desirableness  of  those  forms 
of  wealth.  Starting  from  these  motives  the  movement 
has  run  its  own  course  of  commerce,  colonization,  war, 
missionary  enterprise,  economic  expansion,  and  social 
evolution  for  three  centuries.  The  discovery,  coloniza- 
tion, and  exploitation  of  the  outlying  continents  have 
been  the  most  important  elements  in  modern  history. 
We  Americans  live  in  one  of  the  great  commonwealths 
which  have  been  created  by  it.  From  our  local  and 
later,  but  comparatively  old  center  of  civilization,  we 
are  hard  at  work  occupying  and  subduing  one  of  these 
outlying  continents;  for  in  our  own  history  we  have  been, 
first,  one  of  the  outlying  communities  which  were  being 
exploited,  and  then  ourselves  an  old  civilization  exploiting 
outlying  regions. 

The  process  of  extension  from  Europe  has  gone  on  with 
the  majesty  and  necessity  of  a  process  of  nature.  Noth- 
ing in  human  history  can  compare  with  it  as  an  unfolding 
of  the  drama  of  human  life  on  earth  under  the  aspects 
of  growth,  reaction,  destruction,  new  development,  and 
higher  integration.  The  record  shows  that  the  judgments 
of  statesmen  and  philosophers  about  this  process  from 
its  beginning  have  been  a  series  of  errors,  and  that  the 
policies  by  which  they  have  sought  to  control  and  direct 
it  have  only  crippled  it  and  interrupted  it  by  war,  revolt, 
and  dissension.     At  the  present  time  the  process  is  going 


THE  PROPOSED   DUAL  ORGANIZATION       273 

on  under  a  wrangle  of  discordant  ethical  judgments  about 
its  nature  and  the  rights  of  the  parties  in  it.  We  are 
rebuked  for  the  wrongs  of  the  aborigines,  the  vices  of 
civilization,  the  greed  of  traders,  the  mistakes  of  mis- 
sionaries, land-grabbing,  etc.,  yet  we  Americans  and 
others  are  living  to-day  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  fruits  of 
these  wrongs  perpetrated  a  few  years  ago.  The  fact  is, 
as  the  history  clearly  shows,  that  the  extension  of  the 
higher  civilization  over  the  globe  is  a  natural  process  in 
which  we  are  all  swept  along  in  spite  of  our  ethical  judg- 
ments. Those  men,  civilized  or  uncivilized,  who  cannot 
or  will  not  come  into  the  process  will  be  crushed  under  it. 
It  is  as  impossible  that  the  present  and  future  exploita- 
tion of  Africa  should  not  go  on  as  it  is  that  the  present 
inhabitants  of  Manhattan  Island  should  return  to  Europe 
and  let  the  red  man  come  back  to  his  rights  again.  The 
scope  for  reason  and  conscience  in  the  matter  lies  in 
taking  warning  from  the  statesmen  and  philosophers  who 
have  been  over-hasty  in  the  past  with  their  doctrines  and 
policies  of  how  the  process  must  go  on. 

Looking  at  the  movement  of  men  from  Europe  to  the 
outlying  continents  as  a  phenomenon  in  the  development 
of  private  interests  and  welfare,  it  appears  at  once  that 
the  man  who  went  out  as  a  fortune-hunter  and  he  who 
went  out  as  a  colonist  are  on  a  very  different  footing. 
The  former  might  be  said  to  aim  at  selfishly  exploiting 
the  outlying  country  because  he  hoped,  after  a  few  years, 
to  return  to  Europe  and  there  enjoy  his  gains.  The 
same  could  not  be  said  of  the  colonist,  for  he  cast  in  his 
lot  with  the  new  country,  hoping  there  to  establish  a 
new  home  for  his  descendants  and  to  build  up  a  new 
commonwealth. 

If  the  same  movement  is  regarded  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  duties  and  interests  of  European  states,  it  is  evident 


274      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

that  both  the  fortune-hunter  and  the  colonist  needed, 
at  first,  the  support  and  protection  of  the  state  from 
which  they  went  forth.  The  whole  movement  of  dis- 
covery and  settlement  appears,  in  this  point  of  view,  as  a 
manifestation  of  growing  social  power  in  western  Europe, 
and  the  nations  there  are  seen  to  have  made,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  great  expenditure  of  energy  and  capital  for 
which  they  never  received  any  return.  The  relation  was 
one  of  parenthood,  and  therefore  one  of  sacrifice,  on  the 
part  of  the  mother  countries.  This  relation  was,  however, 
obscured  by  traditions  and  accepted  notions  of  national 
aggrandizement  and  glory,  and  by  notions  about  com- 
merce which  were  accepted  as  axiomatic.  These  notions 
drove  the  great  states  into  policies  of  conquest,  exclusion, 
monopoly,  and  war  with  each  other.  As  a  consequence 
the  whole  grand  movement  came  to  be  regarded  by 
European  statesmen  from  the  standpoint  of  gain  to 
European  nations,  and  they  adopted  sordid  measures  for 
snatching  this  gain  from  each  other.  Those  statesmen 
assumed  that  Europe  was  the  head  of  the  world,  and 
they  allotted  the  outlying  regions  among  themselves  with 
no  regard  for  the  aborigines  and  very  little  regard  for 
the  colonists.  The  body  of  relations  which  was  estab- 
lished between  the  Old  World  and  the  New,  under  this 
theory,  constituted  the  colonial  system. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  colonial  system  stands  in 
history  as  an  attempt  to  exploit  the  outlying  continents 
for  the  benefit  of  Europe.  Thousands  of  lives  and  mil- 
lions of  capital  were  expended  in  the  effort  to  perfect 
the  system,  and  in  that  struggle  to  steal  each  other's 
colonies  which  the  system  caused.  The  logical  outcome 
was  the  ambition  of  each  com^petitor  to  win  universal 
dominion  for  itself  and  to  impose  a  balance-of-power 
policy  on  each  of  the  others.    The  system  had  its  doctrines 


THE  PROPOSED  DUAL  ORGANIZATION       275 

too;  some  old,  some  new:  "He  who  holds  the  sea 
will  hold  the  land,"  "Trade  follows  the  jflag."  The 
English  colonial  system  was  far  less  oppressive  and  more 
enlightened  than  that  of  any  other  nation.  It  alone  was 
founded  on  real  colonization  and  aimed  to  create  new 
commonwealths.  It  was  therefore  the  one  under  which 
the  system  first  broke  down,  for  it  contained  a  fatal 
inconsistency  in  itself.  It  educated  the  colonists  to  inde- 
pendence, and  it  was  certain  that  they  would  go  alone 
as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough  to  do  so,  if  they 
thought  that  they  were  being  exploited  in  the  colonial 
relation.  To  such  extent  as  this  destiny  was  aimed  at 
or  unconsciously  brought  about,  the  construction  of 
modern  history  put  forward  by  Rodbertus  fails  to  be 
correct. 

It  has  become  a  commonplace  of  history  that  the  revolt 
of  the  American  colonies  was  a  good  thing  for  the  colo- 
nies and  for  England.  The  question  no  longer  has  any 
other  than  speculative  interest,  and  perhaps  no  specula- 
tion is  more  idle  than  that  r/hich  deals  with  the  possible 
consequences  of  some  other  course  of  history  than  that 
which  actually  took  place;  but  if  such  speculation  ever 
could  be  profitable,  it  would  be  upon  this  question: 
What  w^ould  have  been  the  consequences  to  human  wel- 
fare if  the  English  statesmen  of  1775  could  have  risen 
to  the  nineteenth-century  doctrine  of  colonies  and  if  the 
whole  English-speaking  world  could  have  remained  united 
in  sympathy  and  harmony.^  This  question  has  so  much 
practical  value  that  it  may  help  us  to  see  the  advantage 
there  may  be  in  a  colonial  relation  where  it  still  exists, 
and  to  see  that  there  is  no  universal  and  dogmatic  ground 
for  independence  which  can  be  urged  by  a  third  party. 

Independence  was  brought  about  on  the  Western  con- 
tinent; not  to  any  important  extent  anywhere  else.    The 


276     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Spanish-American  colonies  had  grievances  against  their 
mother-country  which  fully  justified  their  revolt;  still,  it 
appears  that  they  revolted  chiefly  from  contagion  and 
imitation.  They  have  never  been  able  to  obtain  good 
standing  in  the  family  of  nations  as  independent  common- 
wealths. The  Panama  Congress  of  1824,  in  its  original 
plan,  promised  to  be  a  very  important  incident  in  the 
development  of  the  relations  of  the  New  World  to  the 
Old.  It  appeared  for  a  time  that  the  Western  continent 
might  be  organized  as  a  unit  in  independence  of,  and 
possible  hostility  to,  the  Eastern  continent.  The  project 
came  to  nothing.  It  was  crushed  in  one  of  the  hardest 
political  collisions  in  our  history,  that  between  the  Adams 
administration  and  the  Jackson  opposition.  The  theory 
of  it,  however,  remains  behind  and,  under  the  name  of 
the  Monroe  doctrine,  has  remained  as  a  vague  and  elastic 
notion.  The  practical  outcome  of  any  attempt  to  realize 
that  doctrine  must  be  to  organize  the  world  into  a  dual 
system.  Instead  of  the  old  notion  of  a  world-unit  ruled 
from  Europe  as  its  head,  we  should  have  a  dual  world- 
system,  one  part  under  the  hegemony  of  Europe,  the 
other  part  under  that  of  the  United  States.  Is  this  a 
rational  or  practicable  plan  of  future  development?  Is 
it  not  fantastic  and  arbitrary.'^  If  the  United  States 
pretends  to  hold  aloof  from  a  share  in  the  affairs  of  the 
Eastern  continent,  and  to  demand  that  all  European 
states  shall  abstain  from  any  share  in  the  affairs  of  the 
Western  continent,  is  that  anything  more  than  a  pose 
and  an  affectation.^  Have  we  not  within  a  year  or  two 
been  forced  to  take  action  in  protection  of  our  citizens  in 
China  and  Armenia?  If  Africa  is  opened  up  to  commerce, 
do  we  mean  to  hold  aloof  from  a  share  in  it?  Are  we  not 
already  deeply  interested  in  it  so  far  as  it  has  advanced? 
We  have  interests  in  Madagascar  which  have  already 


,THE  PROPOSED  DUAL  ORGANIZATION       277 

drawn  us  into  the  proceedings  there,  and  which  promise 
to  involve  us  still  further.  We  accepted  a  role  in  the 
war  between  China  and  Japan  which  was  by  no  means 
that  of  an  uninterested  stranger.  Will  anyone  maintain 
that  we  could  carry  out  the  policy  of  abstention  in  respect 
to  that  part  of  the  world  .^ 

On  the  other  hand,  so  long  as  European  nations  own 
colonies  in  America,  how  can  we  rule  the  Western  con- 
tinent without  coming  in  collision  with  them.f^  Even  if 
we  should  dispossess  them  of  those  colonies,  how  would 
it  be  possible  to  rule  the  Western  continent  and  to  deny 
them  any  right  to  meddle  in  its  affairs,  so  long  as  their 
citizens  may  visit  the  same  for  business  or  pleasure  .^^ 
The  notion  that  the  world  can  be  so  divided  that  we  can 
rule  one  part  and  Europe  the  other,  and  thus  never  be 
brought  in  collision  with  each  other,  is  evidently  a  silly 
whim.  We  may  talk  about  "Western  civilization"  or 
''American  ideas,"  but  these  are  only  grandiloquent 
phrases.  Everybody  knows  that  there  is  no  civilization 
common  to  all  America  and  different  from  that  of  Europe; 
there  are  no  ideas  common  to  all  America  and  different 
from  European  ideas.  There  has  never  been  any  sym- 
pathy between  North  and  South  America,  and  there  are 
only  few  and  comparatively  feeble  bonds  of  interest 
based  on  commerce  or  investments.  Either  North  or 
South  America  has  far  stronger  bonds  to  Europe  than 
they  both  have  to  each  other.  As  far  as  the  external 
resemblance  of  "republics"  is  concerned,  the  South 
American  states  have  hitherto  only  made  republican 
government  ridiculous.  The  geographical  neighborhood, 
on  which  stress  is  often  laid,  can  be  seen  by  a  glance  at 
the  map  to  be  non-existent.  If  it  existed  it  would  be  of 
little  importance  compared  with  economic  distance,  which 
is  reckoned  by  cost,  time,  and  facility  of  transportation. 


278     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMXER 

The  Western  continents  are  divided  from  each  other  by 
race,  rehgion,  language,  real  political  institutions,  man- 
ners and  customs,  and  above  all,  by  tastes  and  habits. 
They  entertain  a  strong  dislike  of  each  other.  The 
United  States  could  never  establish  a  hegemony  over  the 
Western  world  until  after  long  years  of  conquest.  In 
their  quarrels  with  European  states  it  suits  the  South 
American  states  very  well  that  the  United  States  should 
act  the  cat's-paw  for  them,  but  it  cannot  be  that  their 
statesmen  will  be  so  short-sighted  as  to  accept  a  pro- 
tection which  would  turn  into  domination  without  a 
moment's  warning;  neither  can  it  be  possible  that  our 
statesmen  will  ever  seriously  commit  us  to  a  responsi- 
bility for  the  proceedings  of  South  xAmerican  states. 

We  may  probe  the  ideas  and  projects  which  are  grouped 
under  this  attempt  at  a  dual  organization  of  the  world 
as  we  will,  in  no  direction  do  we  come  upon  anything  but 
crude  notions  and  inflated  rhetoric.  Such  notions  have 
hitherto  proved  very  costly  to  the  human  race.  Presi- 
dent Cleveland,  in  his  Venezuela  message,  sought  a  parallel 
for  the  Monroe  doctrine  in  the  balance-of -power  doctrine. 
The  parallel  was  unfortunate,  if  it  had  been  true.  The 
balance-of-power  doctrine  cost  frightful  expenditures  of 
life  and  capital,  and  what  was  won  by  them.^  \Miere  is 
the  balance  of  power  as  it  was  understood  in  the  eighteenth 
century  or  in  Napoleon's  time.'^  A  real  parallel  to  the 
Monroe  doctrine  is  furnished  by  the  colonial  system.  The 
latter,  as  above  shown,  was  the  doctrine  of  the  unity  of 
the  world  under  the  headship  of  Europe.  The  former  is 
the  doctrine  of  the  dualism  of  the  world,  with  Europe 
at  the  head  of  one  part  and  the  United  States  at  the  head 
of  the  other.  One  of  these  conceptions  of  the  new  organ- 
ization of  the  human  race,  which  is  to  grow  out  of  the 
colonization  and  settlement  of  the  outlying  countries,  is 


THE  PROPOSED   DUAL  ORGANIZATION       279 

as  arbitrary  as  the  other,  and  the  new  one  can  never  be 
realized  without  far  greater  expenditure  of  life  and  prop- 
erty than  the  other.     If  history  and  science  have  any 
power  over  the  convictions  and  actions  of  men,  here  is  a 
good  opportunity  for  proof  of  it,  for  if  anything  is  proved 
by  ecclesiastical  and  civil  history  it  would  seem  to  be 
the  frightful  cost  of  phrases   and  doctrines  and  of  the 
whole  cohort  of  phantasms  which  take  the  place  of  facts 
and  relations  in  determining  the  actions  of  men.     It  is 
to  these  that  men  have  always  brought  the  heaviest  sac- 
rifices of  their  happiness,  blood,  and  property.     We  have 
had  in  our  own  history  the  doctrines  of  no  entangling 
alliances,    state    rights,    nullification,    manifest    destiny, 
the  self-expanding  power  of  the  Constitution,  the  higher 
law,  secession,  and  as  many  more  as  rhetorical  politicians 
have  found  necessary  to  save  them  the  trouble  of  coming 
down  to  facts  and    law.     How  frightful    has    been  the 
penalty  for  the  people  who  have  been  deluded  by  some  of 
these!     Who  knows  on  what  day  another  of  them  may, 
by  a  turn  of  events,  become  politically  important  and 
call  for  its  share  of  sacrifice  .^^     It  is  a  wise  rule  of  life  for 
a  man  of  education  and  sense  not  to  allow  his  judgment 
to  be  taken  captive  by  stereotyped  catch-words,  mottoes, 
and  doctrines. 

We  have  already  a  commercial  system  in  which  we  have 
undertaken  to  surround  ourselves  by  a  wall  of  taxes  so 
as  to  raise  the  prices  of  all  manufactured  products  twenty- 
five  to  fifty  per  cent  above  the  same  prices  in  western 
Europe.  That  system  has  been  adopted  as  a  policy  of 
prosperity  to  be  produced  by  specific  devices  of  legis- 
lation. We  have  applied  it  to  the  best  part  of  the  con- 
tinent of  North  America.  It  is  now  proposed  to  restrict 
immigration  so  as  to  close  the  labor  market  of  the  same 
part  of  North  America,  in  the  belief  that  wages  will  thus 


280     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

be  raised  and  that,  if  they  are,  a  great  advantage  will  be 
produced  for  the  wages  class.  We  have  also  a  project 
before  us  to  inclose  all  America  in  a  barrier  within  which 
an  arbitrary  circulation  of  silver  money  may  be  secured, 
all  relations  with  the  money  of  the  rest  of  the  world  being 
cut  off.  That  these  doctrines  and  projects  all  hang 
together,  and  are  all  coherent  with  the  political  notion 
of  the  dual  division  of  the  world,  is  obvious.  The  com- 
mon element  is  in  the  narrow  and  distorted  view  of 
what  is  true  and  possible  and  desirable  in  social  and 
economic  affairs. 

We  have  had  before  us,  since  the  revolt  of  the  English 
North  American  colonies,  another  conception  of  the 
organization  of  human  society  which  is  to  come  out  of 
the  extension  of  civilization  to  the  outlying  continents. 
It  is,  in  fact,  now  embedded  in  international  law  and  in 
the  diplomacy  of  civilized  states.  That  is  why  the  advo- 
cates of  the  Monroe  doctrine  have  been  forced  to  meet 
the  argument  that  their  doctrine  was  not  in  international 
law  by  new  spinnings  of  political  metaphysics.  They 
have  to  try  to  cover  the  fact  that  the  Monroe  doctrine 
is  an  attempt  by  the  United  States  to  define  the  rights  of 
other  nations.  The  modern  conception,  however,  is  that 
the  states  of  the  world  are  all  united  in  a  family  of  nations 
whose  rights  and  duties  toward  each  other  are  embodied 
in  a  code  of  international  law.  All  states  may  be  admitted 
into  this  family  of  nations  whenever  they  accept  this  code, 
whether  they  have  previously  been  considered  "civil- 
ized" or  not.  The  code  itself  is  a  product  of  the  reason- 
ing and  moral  convictions  of  civilized  states,  and  it  grows 
by  precedents  and  usages,  as  cases  arise  for  the  applica- 
tion of  the  general  principles  which  have  been  accepted 
as  sound,  because  they  conduce  to  peace,  harmony,  and 
smooth  progress  of  affairs.     The  code  has  undergone  its 


THE  PROPOSED  DUAL  ORGANIZATION       281 

best  developments  in  connection  with  the  spread  of 
enhghtenment  and  the  extension  of  industriaHsm.  This 
is  the  only  conception  of  the  relation  of  parts  of  the 
human  race  to  each  other  which  is  consistent  with  civil- 
ization and  which  is  worthy  of  the  enlightenment  of  our 
age.  Any  "doctrine"  which  is  not  consistent  with  it 
will  sooner  or  later  be  set  aside  through  the  suffering  of 
those   who  adhere  to  it. 


THE  FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL 
EXTENSION 


^ 


XIV 

THE  FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL  ^PTENSION 

[ 1896  ] 


mcT] 


THE  traditional  belief  is  that  a  state  aggrandizes 
itself  by  territorial  extension,  so  that  winning  new 
land  is  gaining  in  wealth  and  prosperity,  just  as  an  indi- 
vidual would  gain  if  he  increased  his  land  possessions. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  a  state  may  be  so  small  in 
territory  and  population  that  it  cannot  serve  the  true 
purposes  of  a  state  for  its  citizens,  especially  in  inter- 
national relations  with  neighboring  states  which  control 
a  large  aggregate  of  men  and  capital.  There  is,  there- 
fore, under  given  circumstances,  a  size  of  territory  and 
population  which-  is  at  the  maximum  of  advantage  for 
the  civil  unit.  The  unification  of  Germany  and  Italy 
was  apparently  advantageous  for  the  people  affected. 
In  the  nineteenth  century  there  has  been  a  tendency  to 
create  national  states,  and  nationality  has  been  advo- 
cated as  the  true  basis  of  state  unity.  The  cases  show, 
however,  that  the  national  unit  does  not  necessarily 
coincide  with  the  most  advantageous  state  unit,  and  that 
the  principle  of  nationality  cannot  override  the  historical 
accidents  which  have  made  the  states.  Sweden  and 
Norway,  possessing  unity,  threaten  to  separate.  Austro- 
Hungary,  a  conglomerate  of  nationalities  largely  hostile 
to  each  other,  will  probably  be  held  together  by  political 
necessity.  The  question  of  expedient  size  will  always 
be  one  for  the  judgment  and  good  sense  of  statesmen. 

[285] 


286     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

IjThe  opinion  may  be  risked  that  Russia  has  carried  out 
|a  poHcy  of  territorial  extension  which  has  been  harmful 
(to  its  internal  integration.     For  three  hundred  years  it 
[has   been   reaching   out    after    more   territory   and   has 
I  sought   the   grandeur   and   glory   of   conquest   and   size. 
jjTo  this  it  B^acrificed  the  elements  of  social  and  indus- 
"  trial  streng^B  The  autocracy  has  been  confirmed  and 
^j  established  JWRuse  it  is  the  only  institution  which  sym- 
bolizes and  maintains  the  unity  of  the  great  mass,  and 
the  military  and  tax  burdens  have  distorted  the  growth 
of  the  society  to  such  an  extent  as  to  produce  disease  and 
\  weakness. 

.     Territorial    aggrandizement    enhances    the    glory    and 
•personal  importance  of  the  man  who  is  the  head  of  a 
[  dynastic  state.     The  fallacy  of  confusing  this  with  the 
greatness  and  strength  of  the  state  itself  is  an  open  pit- 
fall close  at  hand.     It  might  seem  that  a  republic,  one 
of  whose  chief  claims  to  superiority  over  a  monarchy 
lies  in  avoiding  the  danger  of  confusing  the  king  w^ith 
the  state,  ought  to  be  free  from  this  fallacy  of  national 
greatness,  but  we  have  plenty  of  examples  to  prove  that 
the  traditional  notions  are  not  cut  off  by  changing  names 
and  forms. 
(     The  notion  that  gain  of  territory  is  gain  of  wealth  and 

I' strength  for  the  state,  after  the  expedient  size  has  been 
won,  is  a  delusion.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  beneficial 
interest  in  land  and  the  jurisdiction  over  the  people  who 
lived  on  it  were  united  in  one  person.  The  modern 
great  states,  upon  their  formation,  took  to  themselves 
the  jurisdiction,  and  the  beneficial  interest  turned  into 
full  property  in  land.  The  confusion  of  the  two  often 
reappears  now,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  causes 
of  fallacy  in  public  questions.  It  is  often  said  that  the 
United  States  owns  silver-mines,  and  it  is  inferred  that 


FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL  EXTENSION     287 

the  policy  of  the  state  in  regard  to  money  and  currency 
ought  to  be  controlled  in  some  way  by  this  fact.  The 
"United  States,"  as  a  subject  of  property  rights  and  of 
monetary  claims  and  obligations,  may  be  best  defined 
by  calling  it  the  "Fiscus."  This  legal  person  owns  no 
silver-mines.  If  it  did,  it  could  operate  them  by  farming 
them  or  by  royalties.  The  revenue  thus  received  would 
lower  taxes.  The  gain  would  inure  to  all  the  people  in 
the  United  States.  The  body  politic  named  the  United 
States  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  silver-mines  except 
that  it  exercises  jurisdiction  over  the  territory  in  which 
they  lie.  If  it  levies  taxes  on  them  it  also  incurs  expenses 
for  them,  and  as  it  wins  no  profits  on  its  total  income 
and  outgo,  these  must  be  taken  to  be  equal.  It  renders 
services  for  which  it  exacts  only  the  cost  thereof.  The 
beneficial  and  property  interest  in  the  mines  belongs  to 
individuals,  and  they  win  profits  only  by  conducting  the 
exploitation  of  the  mines  with  an  expenditure  of  labor 
and  capital.  These  individuals  are  of  many  nation- 
alities. They  alone  own  the  product  and  have  the  use 
and  enjoyment  of  it.  No  other  individuals,  American 
or  others,  have  any  interest,  right,  duty,  or  responsibility 
in  the  matter.  The  United  States  has  simply  provided 
the  protection  of  its  laws  and  institutions  for  the  mine- 
workers  while  they  were  carrying  on  their  enterprise. 
Its  jurisdiction  was  only  a  burden  to  it,  not  a  profitable 
good.  Its  jurisdiction  was  a  boon  to  the  mine- workers 
and  certainly  did  not  entail  further  obligation. 

It  is  said  that  the  boundary  between  Alaska  and  British 
America  runs  through  a  gold  field,  and  some  people  are 
in  great  anxiety  as  to  who  will  "grab  it. "  If  an  American 
can  go  over  to  the  English  side  and  mine  gold  there  for 
his  profit,  under  English  laws  and  jurisdiction,  and  an 
Englishman  can  come  over  to  the  American  side  and  mine 


288     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM    SUMNER 

gold  there  for  his  profit,  under  American  laws  and  juris- 
diction, what  difference  does  it  make  where  the  hne  falls? 
The  only  case  in  which  it  would  make  any  difference  is 
where  the  laws  and  institutions  of  the  two  states  were  not 
on  equal  stages  of  enlightenment. 

This  case  serves  to  bring  out  distinctly  a  reason  far 
the  old  notion  of  territorial  extension  which  is  no  longer 
valid.  In  the  old  colonial  system,  states  conquered 
territories  or  founded  colonies  in  order  to  shut  them 
against  all  other  states  and  to  exploit  them  on  principles 
of  subjugation  and  monopoly.  It  is  only  under  this 
system  that  the  jurisdiction  is  anything  but  a  burden. 

If  the  United  States  should  admit  Hawaii  to  the  Union, 
the  Fiscus  of  the  former  state  would  collect  more  taxes 
and  incur  more  expenses.  The  circumstances  are  such 
that  the  latter  would  probably  be  the  greater.  The 
United  States  would  not  acquire  a  square  foot  of  land 
in  property  unless  it  paid  for  it.  Individual  Americans 
would  get  no  land  to  till  without  paying  for  it  and  would 
win  no  products  from  it  except  by  wisely  expending  their 
labor  and  capital  on  it.  All  that  they  can  do  now. 
So  long  as  there  is  a  government  on  the  islands,  native 
or  other,  which  is  competent  to  guarantee  peace,  order, 
and  security,  no  more  is  necessary,  and  for  any  outside 
power  to  seize  the  jurisdiction  is  an  unjustifiable  aggres- 
sion. That  jurisdiction  would  be  the  best  founded  which 
was  the  most  liberal  and  enlightened,  and  would  give 
the  best  security  to  all  persons  who  sought  the  islands 
upon  their  lawful  occasions.  The  jurisdiction  would,  in 
any  case,  be  a  burden,  and  any  state  might  be  glad  to 
see  any  other  state  assume  the  burden,  provided  that  it 
was  one  which  could  be  relied  upon  to  execute  the  charge 
on  enlightened  principles  for  the  good  of  all.  The  best 
case  is,  therefore,  always  that  in  which  the  resident  popu- 


\  fc.b  , 


FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL  EXTENSION     289 

lation  produce  their  own  state  by  the  institutions  of  self- 
government. 

What  private  individuals  want  is  free  access,  under 
order  and  security,  to  any  part  of  the  earth's  surface,  in 
order  that  they  may  avail  themselves  of  its  natural 
resources  for  their  use,  either  by  investment  or  commerce. 
If,  therefore,  we  could  have  free  trade  with  Hawaii  while  o  "^ 
somebody  else  had  the  jurisdiction,  we  should  gain  all  '^'Z 
the  advantages  and  escape  all  the  burdens.  The  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  establishes  absolute  free 
trade  between  all  parts  of  the  territory  under  its  jurisdic- 
tion. A  large  part  of  our  population  was  thrown  into 
indignant  passion  because  the  Administration  rejected 
the  annexation  of  Hawaii,  regarding  it  like  the  act  of  a 
man  who  refuses  the  gift  of  a  farm.  These  persons  were 
generally  those  who  are  thrown  into  excitement  by  any 
proposition  of  free  trade.  They  will  not,  therefore, 
accept  free  trade  with  the  islands  while  somebody  else 
has  the  trouble  and  burden  of  the  jurisdiction,  but  they 
would  accept  free  trade  with  the  islands  eagerly  if  they 
could  get  the  burden  of  the  jurisdiction  too. 

Canada  has  to  deal  with  a  race  war  and  a  religious 
war,  each  of  great  virulence,  which  render  governmental 
jurisdiction  in  the  Dominion  difficult  and  hazardous. 
If  we  could  go  to  Canada  and  trade  there  our  products 
for  those  of  that  country,  we  could  win  all  for  our  private 
interests  which  that  country  is  able  to  contribute  to  the 
welfare  of  mankind,  and  we  should  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  civil  and  political  difficulties  which  harass  the 
government.  We  refuse  to  have  free  trade  with  Canada. 
Our  newspaper  and  congressional  economists  prove  to 
their  own  satisfaction  that  it  would  be  a  great  harm  to 
us  to  have  free  trade  with  her  now,  while  she  is  outside 
the  jurisdiction  under  which  we  hve;    but,  within  a  few 


290     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

months,  we  have  seen  an  eager  impulse  of  public  opinion 
toward  a  war  of  conquest  against  Canada.  If,  then,  we 
could  force  her  to  come  under  the  same  jurisdiction,  by 
a  cruel  and  unprovoked  war,  thus  bringing  on  ourselves 
the  responsibility  for  all  her  civil  discords  and  problems, 
it  appears  to  be  believed  that  free  trade  with  her  would 
be  a  good  thing. 

The  case  of  Cuba  is  somewhat  different.  If  we  could 
go  to  the  island  and  trade  with  the  same  freedom  with 
which  we  can  go  to  Louisiana,  we  could  make  all  the 
gains,  by  investment  and  commerce,  which  the  island 
offers  to  industry  and  enterprise,  provided  that  either 
Spain  or  a  local  government  would  give  the  necessary 
security,  and  we  should  have  no  share  in  political  struggles 
there.  It  may  be  that  the  proviso  is  not  satisfied,  or 
soon  will  not  be.  Here  is  a  case,  then,  which  illustrates 
the  fact  that  states  are  often  forced  to  extend  their 
jurisdiction  whether  they  want  to  do  so  or  not.  Civilized 
states  are  forced  to  supersede  the  local  jurisdiction  of 
uncivilized  or  half -civilized  states,  in  order  to  police  the 
territory  and  establish  the  necessary  guarantees  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce.  It  is  idle  to  set  up  absolute  doc- 
trines of  national  ownership  in  the  soil  which  would 
justify  a  group  of  population  in  spoiling  a  part  of  the 
earth's  surface  for  themselves  and  everybody  else.  The 
island  of  Cuba  may  fall  into  anarchy.  If  it  does,  the 
civilized  world  may  look  to  the  United  States  to  take 
the  jurisdiction  and  establish  order  and  security  there. 
We  might  be  compelled  to  do  it.  It  would,  however,  be 
a  great  burden,  and  possibly  a  fatal  calamity  to  us. 
Probably  any  proposition  that  England  should  take  it 
would  call  out  a  burst  of  jingo  passion  against  which  all 
reasoning  would  be  powerless.  W^e  ought  to  pray  that 
England  would  take  it.     She  would  govern  it  well,  and 


FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL  EXTENSION     291 

everybody  would  have  free  access  to  it  for  the  purposes 
of  private  interest,  while  our  Government  would  be  free 
from  all  complications  with  the  politics  of  the  island. 
If  we  take  the  jurisdiction  of  the  island,  we  shall  find 
ourselves  in  a  political  dilemma,  each  horn  of  which  is  as 
disastrous  as  the  other:  either  we  must  govern  it  as  a 
subject  province,  or  we  must  admit  it  into  the  Union  as 
a  state  or  group  of  states.  Our  system  is  unfit  for  the 
government  of  subject  provinces.  They  have  no  place 
in  it.  They  would  become  seats  of  corruption,  which 
would  react  on  our  own  body  politic.  If  we  admitted  the 
island  as  a  state  or  group  of  states,  we  should  have  to 
let  it  help  govern  us.  The  prospect  of  adding  to  the 
present  senate  a  number  of  Cuban  senators,  either  native 
or  carpet-bag,  is  one  whose  terrors  it  is  not  necessary  to 
unfold.  Nevertheless  it  appears  that  there  is  a  large 
party  which  would  not  listen  to  free  trade  with  the 
island  while  any  other  nation  has  the  jurisdiction  of  it, 
but  who  are  ready  to  grab  it  at  any  cost  and  to  take 
free  trade  with  it,  provided  that  they  can  get  the  political 
burdens  too. 

This  confederated  state  of  ours  was  never  planned  for 
indefinite  expansion  or  for  an  imperial  policy.  We  boast 
of  it  a  great  deal,  but  we  must  know  that  its  advan- 
tages are  won  at  the  cost  of  limitations,  as  is  the  case 
with  most  things  in  this  world.  The  fathers  of  the 
Republic  planned  a  confederation  of  free  and  peaceful 
industrial  commonwealths,  shielded  by  their  geographical 
position  from  the  jealousies,  rivalries,  and  traditional 
policies  of  the  Old  World  and  bringing  all  the  resources 
of  civilization  to  bear  for  the  domestic  happiness  of  the 
population  only.  They  meant  to  have  no  grand  state- 
craft or  "high  politics,"  no  "balance  of  power"  or 
"reasons  of  state,"  which  had  cost  the  human  race  so 


292     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

much.  They  meant  to  offer  no  field  for  what  Benjamin 
FrankUn  called  the  "pest  of  glory."  It  is  the  limitation 
of  this  scheme  of  the  state  that  the  state  created  under 
it  must  forego  a  great  number  of  the  grand  functions  of 
European  states;  especially  that  it  contains  no  methods 
and  apparatus  of  conquest,  extension,  domination,  and 
imperialism.  The  plan  of  the  fathers  would  have  no 
controlling  authority  for  us  if  it  had  been  proved  by 
experience  that  that  plan  was  narrow,  inadequate,  and 
mistaken.  Are  we  prepared  to  vote  that  it  has  proved 
so.'^  For  our  territorial  extension  has  reached  limits 
which  are  complete  for  all  purposes  and  leave  no  necessity 
for  "rectification  of  boundaries."  ^Any  extension  will 
open  questions,  not  close  them.  Any  extension  will  not 
make  us  more  secure  where  we  are,  but  will  force  us  to 
take  new  measures  to  secure  our  new  acquisitions.  The 
preservation  of  acquisitions  will  force  us  to  reorganize 
our  internal  resources,  so  as  to  make  it  possible  to  prepare 
them  in  advance  and  to  mobilize  them  with  promptitude. 
This  will  lessen  liberty  and  require  discipline.  It  will 
increase  taxation  and  all  the  pressure  of  government. 
It  will  divert  the  national  energy  from  the  provision  of 
self-maintenance  and  comfort  for  the  people,  and  will 
necessitate  stronger  and  more  elaborate  governmental 
machinery.  All  this  will  be  disastrous  to  republican 
institutions  and  to  democracy.  Moreover,  all  extension 
puts  a  new  strain  on  the  internal  cohesion  of  the  pre- 
existing mass,  threatening  a  new  cleavage  within.  If  we 
had  never  taken  Texas  and  Northern  Mexico  we  should 
never  have  had  secession. 

The  sum  of  the  matter  is  that  colonization  and  terri- 

itorial  extension  are  burdens,  not  gains.     Great  civilized 

'States  cannot  avoid  these  burdens.     They  are  the  penalty 

of  greatness  because  they  are  the  duties  of  it.     No  state 


FALLACY  OF  TERRITORIAL  EXTENSION     293 

\  can  successfully  undertake  to  extend  its  jurisdiction  unless 
)  its  internal  vitality  is  high,  so  that  it  has  surplus  energy 
;  to  dispose  (^.  /Russia,  as  already  mentioned,  is  a  state 
,  which  has  taEen  upon  itself  tasks  of  this  kind  beyond  its 
strength,  and  for  which  it  is  in  no  way  competent.  Italy 
offers  at  this  moment  the  strongest  instance  of  a  state 
which  is  imperiling  its  domestic  welfare  for  a  colonial 
policy  which  is  beyond  its  strength,  is  undertaken  arbi- 
trarily, and  has  no  proper  motive.  Germany  has  taken 
up  a  colonial  policy  with  great  eagerness,  apparently 
from  a  notion  that  it  is  one  of  the  attributes  of  a  great 
state.  To  maintain  it  she  must  add  a  great  navy  to 
her  great  military  establishment  and  increase  the  burdens 
of  a  population  which  is  poor  and  heavily  taxed  and  which 
has  not  in  its  territory  any  great  natural  resources  from 
which  to  draw  the  strength  to  bear  its  burdens.  Spain 
is  exhausting  her  last  strength  to  keep  Cuba,  which  can 
never  repay  the  cost  unless  it  is  treated  on  the  old  colonial 
plan  as  a  subject  province  to  be  exploited  for  the  benefit 
of  the  mother-country.  If  that  is  done,  however,  the 
only  consequence  will  be  another  rebellion  and  greater 
expenditure.  England,  as  a  penalty  of  her  greatness, 
finds  herself  in  all  parts  of  the  world  face  to  face  with 
the  necessity  of  maintaining  her  jurisdiction  and  of 
extending  it  in  order  to  maintain  it.  When  she  does  so 
she  finds  herself  only  extending  law  and  order  for  the 
benefit  of  everybody.  It  is  only  in  circumstances  like 
hers  that  the  burdens  have  any  compensation. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

BY  SPAIN 


XV 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

BY  SPAIN 

[  1898  ] 

TOURING  the  last  year  the  pubhc  has  been  familiar- 
^-^  ized  with  descriptions  of  Spain  and  of  Spanish 
methods  of  doing  things  until  the  name  of  Spain  has 
become  a  symbol  for  a  certain  well-defined  set  of  notions 
and  policies.  On  the  other  hand,  the  name  of  the  United 
States  has  always  been,  for  all  of  us,  a  symbol  for  a  state 
of  things,  a  set  of  ideas  and  traditions,  a  group  of  views 
about  social  and  political  affairs.  Spain  was  the  first, 
for  a  long  time  the  greatest,  of  the  modern  imperialistic 
states.  The  United  States,  by  its  historical  origin,  its 
traditions,  and  its  principles,  is  the  chief  representative 
of  the  revolt  and  reaction  against  that  kind  of  a  state. 
I  intend  to  show  that,  by  the  line  of  action  now  proposed 
to  us,  which  we  call  expansion  and  imperialism,  we  are 
throwing  away  some  of  the  most  important  elements  of 
the  American  symbol  and  are  adopting  some  of  the  most 
important  elements  of  the  Spanish  symbol.  We  have 
beaten  Spain  in  a  military  conflict,  but  we  are  submitting 
to  be  conquered  by  her  on  the  field  of  ideas  and  policies. 
Expansionism  and  imperialism  are  nothing  but  the  old 
philosophies  of  national  prosperity  which  have  brought 
Spain  to  where  she  now  is.  Those  philosophies  appeal 
to  national  vanity  and  national  cupidity.  They  are 
seductive,  especially  upon  the  first  view  and  the  most 
superficial  judgment,  and  therefore  it  cannot  be  denied 

[297] 


298     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

that  they  are  very  strong  for  popular  effect.  They  are 
delusions,  and  they  will  lead  us  to  ruin  unless  we  are 
hard-headed  enough  to  resist  them.  In  any  case  the 
year  1898  is  a  great  landmark  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States.  The  consequences  will  not  be  all  good  or  all 
bad,  for  such  is  not  the  nature  of  societal  influences. 
They  are  always  mixed  of  good  and  ill,  and  so  it  will  be 
in  this  case.  Fifty  years  from  now  the  historian,  looking 
back  to  1898,  will  no  doubt  see,  in  the  course  which  things 
will  have  taken,  consequences  of  the  proceedings  of  that 
year  and  of  this  present  one  which  will  not  all  be  bad, 
but  you  will  observe  that  that  is  not  a  justification  for  a 
happy-go-lucky  policy;  that  does  not  affect  our  duty 
to-day  in  all  that  we  do  to  seek  wisdom  and  prudence 
and  to  determine  our  actions  by  the  best  judgment  which 
we  can  form. 

War,  expansion,  and  imperialism  are  questions  of 
statesmanship  and  of  nothing  else.  I  disregard  all  other 
aspects  of  them  and  all  extraneous  elements  which  have 
been  intermingled  with  them.  I  received  the  other  day 
a  circular  of  a  new  educational  enterprise  in  which  it 
was  urged  that,  on  account  of  our  new  possessions,  we 
ought  now  to  devote  especial  study  to  history,  political 
economy,  and  what  is  called  political  science.  I  asked 
myself,  Why.^^  What  more  reason  is  there  for  pursuing 
these  studies  now  on  behalf  of  our  dependencies  than 
there  was  before  to  pursue  them  on  behalf  of  ourselves? 
In  our  proceedings  of  1898  we  made  no  use  of  whatever 
knowledge  we  had  of  any  of  these  lines  of  study.  The 
original  and  prime  cause  of  the  war  was  that  it  was  a 
move  of  partisan  tactics  in  the  strife  of  parties  at  Wash- 
ington. As  soon  as  it  seemed  resolved  upon,  a  number 
of  interests  began  to  see  their  advantage  in  it  and  hastened 
to  further  it.     It  was  necessary  to  make  appeals  to  the 


CONQUEST  OF  THE   U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         299 

public  which  would  bring  quite  other  motives  to  the 
support  of  the  enterprise  and  win  the  consent  of  classes 
who  would  never  consent  to  either  financial  or  political 
jobbery.  Such  appeals  were  found  in  sensational  asser- 
tions which  we  had  no  means  to  verify,  in  phrases  of 
alleged  patriotism,  in  statements  about  Cuba  and  the 
Cubans  which  we  now  know  to  have  been  entirely  untrue. 

Where  was  the  statesmanship  of  all  this?  If  it  is  not 
an  established  rule  pJ  statecraft  that  a  statesman  should 
never  impose  any  sacrifices  on  his  people  for  anything 
but  their  own  interests,  then  it  is  useless  to  study  polit- 
ical philosophy  any  more,  for  this  is  the  alphabet  of  it. 
It  is  contrary  to  honest  statesmanship  to  imperil  the 
political  welfare  of  the  state  for  party  interests.  It  was 
unstatesmanlike  to  publish  a  solemn  declaration  that  we 
would  not  seize  any  territory,  and  especially  to  charac- 
terize such  action  in  advance  as  "criminal  aggression," 
for  it  was  morally  certain  that  we  should  come  out  of  any 
war  with  Spain  with  conquered  territory  on  our  hands, 
and  the  people  who  wanted  the  war,  or  who  consented  to 
it,  hoped  that  we  should  do  so. 

We  talk  about  "liberty"  all  the  time  in  a  big  and 
easy  way,  as  if  liberty  was  a  thing  that  men  could  have 
if  they  want  it,  and  to  any  extent  to  which  they  want  it. 
It  is  certain  that  a  very  large  part  of  human  liberty  con- 
sists simply  in  the  choice  either  to  do  a  thing  or  to  let 
it  alone.  If  we  decide  to  do  it,  a  whole  series  of  conse- 
quences is  entailed  upon  us  in  regard  to  which  it  is  exceed- 
ingly difficult,  or  impossible,  for  us  to  exercise  any  liberty 
at  all.  The  proof  of  this  from  the  case  before  us  is  oO 
clear  and  easy  that  I  need  spend  no  words  upon  it.  Here, 
then,  you  have  the  reason  why  it  is  a  rule  of  sound  states- 
manship not  to  embark  on  an  adventurous  policy.  A 
statesman  could  not  be  expected  to  know  in  advance 


300     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

that  we  should  come  out  of  the  war  with  the  PhiHppines 
on  our  hands,  but  it  belongs  to  his  education  to  warn 
him  that  a  policy  of  adventure  and  of  gratuitous  enter- 
prise would  be  sure  to  entail  embarrassments  of  some 
kind.  What  comes  to  us  in  the  evolution  of  our  own 
life  and  interests,  that  we  must  meet;  what  we  go  to 
seek  which  lies  beyond  that  domain  is  a  waste  of  our 
energy  and  a  compromise  of  our  liberty  and  welfare. 
If  this  is  not  sound  doctrine,  then  the  historical  and 
social  sciences  have  nothing  to  teach  us  which  is  worth 
any  trouble. 

There  is  another  observation,  however,  about  the  war 
which  is  of  far  greater  importance:  that  is,  that  it  was  a 
gross  violation  of  self-government.  We  boast  that  we 
are  a  self-governing  people,  and  in  this  respect,  particu- 
larly, we  compare  ourselves  with  pride  with  older  nations. 
W^at  is  the  difference  after  all.^  The  Russians,  whom 
we  always  think  of  as  standing  at  the  opposite  pole  of 
political  institutions,  have  self-government,  if  you  mean 
by  it  acquiescence  in  what  a  little  group  of  people  at  the 
head  of  the  government  agree  to  do.  The  war  with 
Spain  was  precipitated  upon  us  headlong,  without  reflec- 
tion or  deliberation,  and  without  any  due  formulation  of 
public  opinion.  W^henever  a  voice  was  raised  in  behalf 
of  deliberation  and  the  recognized  maxims  of  statesman- 
ship, it  was  howled  down  in  a  storm  of  vituperation  and 
cant.  Everything  was  done  to  make  us  throw  away 
sobriety  of  thought  and  calmness  of  judgment  and  to 
inflate  all  expressions  with  sensational  epithets  and 
turgid  phrases.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  everything  in 
regard  to  the  war  has  been  treated  in  an  exalted  strain 
of  sentiment  and  rhetoric  very  unfavorable  to  the  truth. 
At  present  the  whole  periodical  press  of  the  country 
seems  to  be  occupied  in  tickling  the  national  vanity  to 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         301 

the  utmost  by  representations  about  the  war  which  are 
extravagant  and  fantastic.  There  will  be  a  penalty  to 
be  paid  for  all  this.  Nervous  and  sensational  news- 
papers are  just  as  corrupting,  especially  to  young  people, 
as  nervous  and  sensational  novels.  The  habit  of  expect- 
ing that  all  mental  pabulum  shall  be  highly  spiced,  and 
the  corresponding  loathing  for  whatever  is  soberly  truth- 
ful, undermines  character  as  much  as  any  other  vice. 
Patriotism  is  being  prostituted  into  a  nervous  intoxica- 
tion which  is  fatal  to  an  apprehension  of  truth.  It 
builds  around  us  a  fool's  paradise,  and  it  will  lead  us 
into  errors  about  our  position  and  relations  just  like  those 
which  we  have  been  ridiculing  in  the  case  of  Spain. 

There  are  some  now  who  think  that  it  is  the  perfection 
of  statesmanship  to  say  that  expansion  is  a  fact  and 
that  it  is  useless  to  discuss  it.  We  are  told  that  we  must 
not  cross  any  bridges  until  we  come  to  them;  that  is, 
that  we  must  discuss  nothing  in  advance,  and  that  we 
must  not  discuss  anything  which  is  past  because  it  is 
irretrievable.  No  doubt  this  would  be  a  very  acceptable 
doctrine  to  the  powers  that  be,  for  it  would  mean  that 
they  were  relieved  from  responsibility,  but  it  would  be  a 
marvelous  doctrine  to  be  accepted  by  a  self-governing 
people.  Senator  Foraker  has  told  us  that  we  are  not  to 
keep  the  Philippines  longer  than  is  necessary  to  teach  the 
people  self-government.  How  one  man  can  tell  what 
we  are  to  do  before  the  constitutional  authorities  have 
decided  it,  I  do  not  know.  Perhaps  it  is  a  detail  in  our 
new  method  of  self-government.  If  his  assurances  are 
to  be  trusted,  we  are  paying  $20,000,000  for  the  privilege 
of  tutoring  the  Tagals  up  to  liberty  and  self-government. 
I  do  not  believe  that,  if  the  United  States  undertakes  to 
govern  the  islands,  it  will  ever  give  them  up  except  to 
superior  force,  but  the  weakening  of  imperialism  shown 


302      ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

by  this  gentleman's  assurances,  after  a  few  days  of  mild 
debate  in  the  senate,  shows  that  agitation  of  the  subject 
is  not  yet  in  vain.  Then  again,  if  we  have  done  anything, 
especially  if  we  have  acted  precipitately,  it  is  a  well- 
recognized  course  of  prudent  behavior  to  find  out  where 
we  are,  what  we  have  done,  and  what  the  new  situation 
is  into  which  we  have  come.  Then,  too,  we  must  remem- 
ber that  when  the  statesman  lays  a  thing  down  the  his- 
torian takes  it  up,  and  he  will  group  it  with  historical 
parallels  and  contrasts.  There  is  a  set  of  men  who  have 
always  been  referred  to,  in  our  Northern  states,  for  the 
last  thirty  years,  with  especial  disapproval.  They  are 
those  Southerners  who,  in  1861,  did  not  believe  in  seces- 
sion, but,  as  they  said,  "went  with  their  states."  They 
have  been  condemned  for  moral  cowardice.  Yet  within 
a  year  it  has  become  almost  a  doctrine  with  us  that 
patriotism  requires  that  we  should  hold  our  tongues  while 
our  interests,  our  institutions,  our  most  sacred  traditions, 
and  our  best  established  maxims  have  been  trampled 
underfoot.  There  is  no  doubt  that  moral  courage  is  the 
virtue  which  is  more  needed  than  any  other  in  the  mod- 
ern democratic  state,  and  that  truckling  to  popularity 
is  the  worst  political  vice.  The  press,  the  platform, 
and  the  pulpit  have  all  fallen  under  this  vice,  and  there 
is  evidence  that  the  university  also,  which  ought  to  be 
the  last  citadel  of  truth,  is  succumbing  to  it  likewise. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  the  conservative  classes  of  this 
country  will  yet  look  back  with  great  regret  to  their 
acquiescence  in  the  events  of  1898  and  the  doctrines 
and  precedents  which  have  been  silently  established. 
Let  us  be  well  assured  that  self-government  is  not  a 
matter  of  flags  and  Fourth  of  July  orations,  nor  yet  of 
strife  to  get  offices.  Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  that 
as  of  every  other  political  good.     The  perpetuity  of  self- 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         303 

government  depends  on  the  sound  political  sense  of  the 
people,  and  sound  political  sense  is  a  matter  of  habit 
and  practice.  We  can  give  it  up  and  we  can  take  instead 
pomp  and  glory.  That  is  what  Spain  did.  She  had  as 
much  self-government  as  any  country  in  Europe  at  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  union  of  the 
smaller  states  into  one  big  one  gave  an  impulse  to  her 
national  feeling  and  national  development.  The  dis- 
covery of  America  put  into  her  hands  the  control  of 
immense  territories.  National  pride  and  ambition  were 
stimulated.  Then  came  the  struggle  with  France  for 
world-dominion,  which  resulted  in  absolute  monarchy 
and  bankruptcy  for  Spain.  She  lost  self-government 
and  saw  her  resources  spent  on  interests  which  were 
foreign  to  her,  but  she  could  talk  about  an  empire  on 
which  the  sun  never  set  and  boast  of  her  colonies,  her 
gold-mines,  her  fleets  and  armies  and  debts.  She  had 
glory  and  pride,  mixed,  of  course,  with  defeat  and  dis- 
aster, such  as  must  be  experienced  by  any  nation  on  that 
course  of  policy;  and  she  grew  weaker  in  her  industry 
and  commerce  and  poorer  in  the  status  of  the  population 
all  the  time.  She  has  never  been  able  to  recover  real 
self-government  yet.  If  we  Americans  believe  in  self- 
government,  why  do  we  let  it  slip  away  from  us?  Why 
do  we  barter  it  away  for  military  glory  as  Spain  did.^ 

There  is  not  a  civilized  nation  which  does  not  talk^ 
about  its  civilizing  mission  just  as  grandly  as  we  do. 
The  English,  who  really  have  more  to  boast  of  in  this 
respect  than  anybody  else,  talk  least  about  it,  but  the 
Phariseeism  with  which  they  correct  and  instruct  other 
people  has  made  them  hated  all  over  the  globe.  The 
French  believe  themselves  the  guardians  of  the  highest 
and  purest  culture,  and  that  the  eyes  of  all  mankind  are 
fixed  on  Paris,  whence  they  expect  oracles  of  thought 


304     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  taste.  The  Germans  regard  themselves  as  charged 
with  a  mission,  especially  to  us  Americans,  to  save  us 
from  egoism  and  materialism.  The  Russians,  in  their 
books  and  newspapers,  talk  about  the  civilizing  mission 
of  Russia  in  language  that  might  be  translated  from  some 
of  the  finest  paragraphs  in  our  imperialistic  newspapers. 
The  first  principle  of  Mohammedanism  is  that  we  Chris- 
tians are  dogs  and  infidels,  fit  only  to  be  enslaved  or 
butchered  by  Moslems.  It  is  a  corollary  that  wherever 
Mohammedanism  extends  it  carries,  in  the  belief  of  its 
votaries,  the  highest  blessings,  and  that  the  whole  human 
race  would  be  enormously  elevated  if  Mohammedanism 
should  supplant  Christianity  everywhere.  To  come,  last, 
to  Spain,  the  Spaniards  have,  for  centuries,  considered 
themselves  the  most  zealous  and  self-sacrificing  Chris- 
tians, especially  charged  by  the  xAlmighty,  on  this  account, 
to  spread  true  religion  and  civilization  over  the  globe. 
They  think  themselves  free  and  noble,  leaders  in  refine- 
ment and  the  sentiments  of  personal  honor,  and  they 
despise  us  as  sordid  money-grabbers  and  heretics.  I 
could  bring  you  passages  from  peninsular  authors  of  the 
first  rank  about  the  grand  role  of  Spain  and  Portugal  in 
spreading  freedom  and  truth.  Now  each  nation  laughs 
at  all  the  others  when  it  observes  these  manifestations 
of  national  vanity.  You  may  rely  upon  it  that  they  are 
all  ridiculous  by  virtue  of  these  pretensions,  including 
ourselves.  The  point  is  that  each  of  them  repudiates 
the  standards  of  the  others,  and  the  outlying  nations, 
which  are  to  be  civilized,  hate  all  the  standards  of  civil- 
ized men.  We  assume  that  what  we  like  and  practice, 
and  what  we  think  better,  must  come  as  a  welcome 
blessing  to  Spanish-Americans  and  Filipinos.  This  is 
grossly  and  obviously  untrue.  They  hate  our  ways. 
They  are  hostile  to  our  ideas.     Our  religion,  language. 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN  305 

institutions,  and  manners  offend  them.  They  like  their 
own  ways,  and  if  we  appear  amongst  them  as  rulers, 
there  will  be  social  discord  in  all  the  great  departments 
of  social  interest.  The  most  important  thing  which  we 
shall  inherit  from  the  Spaniards  will  be  the  task  of  sup- 
pressing rebellions.  If  the  United  States  takes  out  of 
the  hands  of  Spain  her  mission,  on  the  ground  that  Spain 
is  not  executing  it  well,  and  if  this  nation  in  its  turn 
attempts  to  be  school-mistress  to  others,  it  will  shrivel 
up  into  the  same  vanity  and  self-conceit  of  which  Spain 
now  presents  an  example.  To  read  our  current  litera- 
ture one  would  think  that  we  were  already  well  on  the 
way  to  it.  Now,  the  great  reason  why  all  these  enter- 
prises which  begin  by  saying  to  somebody  else.  We  know 
what  is  good  for  you  better  than  you  know  yourself 
and  we  are  going  to  make  you  do  it,  are  false  and 
wrong  is  that  they  violate  liberty;  or,  to  turn  the  same 
statement  into  other  words,  the  reason  why  liberty,  of 
which  we  Americans  talk  so  much,  is  a  good  thing  is 
that  it  means  leaving  people  to  live  out  their  own  lives 
in  their  own  way,  while  we  do  the  same.  If  we  believe 
in  liberty,  as  an  American  principle,  why  do  we  not 
stand  by  it?  Why  are  we  going  to  throw  it  away  to  enter 
upon  a  Spanish  policy  of  dominion  and  regulation  .f^ 

The  United  States  cannot  be  a  colonizing  nation  for^a^ 
long  time  yet.  We  have  only  twenty-three  persons  t6 
the  square  mile  in  the  United  States  without  Alaska.  \ 
The  country  can  multiply  its  population  by  thirteen; 
that  is,  the  population  could  rise  above  a  billion  before 
the  whole  country  would  be  as  densely  populated  as 
Rhode  Island  is  now.  There  is,  therefore,  no  pressure  of 
population,  which  is  the  first  condition  of  rational  expan- 
sion, unless  we  could  buy  another  territory  like  the  Mis- 
sissippi Valley  with  no  civilized  population  in  it.     If  we 


306     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

could  do  that  it  would  postpone  the  day  of  over-popu- 
lation still  further,  and  make  easier  conditions  for  our 
people  in  the  next  generations.  In  the  second  place, 
the  islands  which  we  have  taken  from  Spain  never  can 
be  the  residence  of  ^American  families,  removing  and 
settling  to  make  their  homes  there.  The  climatic  con- 
ditions forbid  it.  Although  Spaniards  have  established 
themselves  in  Spanish  America,  even  in  the  tropics,  the 
evils  of  Spanish  rule  have  largely  arisen  from  the  fact 
that  Spaniards  have  gone  to  the  colonies  as  adventurers, 
eager  to  make  fortunes  as  quickly  as  possible,  that  they 
might  return  to  Spain  to  enjoy  them.  That  the  relation 
of  our  people  to  these  possessions  will  have  that  character 
is  already  apparent.  It  is,  therefore,  inaccurate  to  speak 
of  a  colonial  system  in  describing  our  relation  to  these 
dependencies,  but  as  we  have  no  other  term,  let  us  use 
this  one  and  inquire  what  kind  of  a  colonial  system  we  are 
to  establish. 

I.  Spain  stands,  in  modern  history,  as  the  first  state 
to  develop  and  apply  a  colonial  system  to  her  outlying 
possessions.  Her  policy  was  to  exclude  absolutely  all 
non-Spaniards  from  her  subject  territories  and  to  exploit 
them  for  the  benefit  of  Spain,  without  much  regard  for 
the  aborigines  or  the  colonists.  The  cold  and  unneces- 
sary cruelty  of  the  Spaniards  to  the  aborigines  is  appall- 
ing, even  when  compared  with  the  treatment  of  the 
aborigines  by  other  Europeans.  A  modern  economist 
stands  aghast  at  the  economic  measures  adopted  by 
Spain,  as  well  in  regard  to  her  domestic  policy  as  to  her 
colonies.  It  seems  as  if  those  measures  could  only  have 
been  inspired  by  some  demon  of  folly,  they  were  so  de- 
structive to  her  prosperity.  She  possesses  a  large  liter- 
ature from  the  last  three  centuries,  in  which  her  publicists 
discuss  with  amazement  the  question  whether  it  was  a 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN  307 

blessing  or  a  curse  to  get  the  Indies,  and  why,  with  all 
the  supposed  conditions  of  prosperity  in  her  hands,  she 
was  declining  all  the  time.  We  now  hear  it  argued  that 
she  is  well  rid  of  her  colonies,  and  that,  if  she  will  devote 
her  energies  to  her  internal  development  and  rid  her 
politics  of  the  corruption  of  colonial  officials  and  interests, 
she  may  be  regenerated.  That  is  a  rational  opinion.  It 
is  the  best  diagnosis  of  her  condition  and  the  best  pre- 
scription of  a  remedy  which  the  occasion  has  called  forth. 
But  what,  then,  will  happen  to  the  state  which  has  taken 
over  her  colonies?  I  can  see  no  answer  except  that  that 
nation,  with  them,  has  taken  over  the  disease  and  that 
it  now  is  to  be  corrupted  by  exploiting  dependent  com- 
munities just  as  she  has  been.  That  it  stands  exposed 
to  this  danger  is  undeniable. 

It  would  not  be  becoming  to  try,  in  a  paragraph,  to  set 
forth  the  causes  of  the  decadence  of  Spain,  and  although 
the  economic  history  of  that  country  has  commanded 
such  attention  from  me  as  I  could  give  to  it  consistently 
with  other  obligations,  yet  I  could  not  feel  prepared  to 
do  any  justice  to  that  subject;  but  one  or  two  features 
of  the  history  can  be  defined  with  confidence,  and  they 
are  such  as  are  especially  instructive  for  us. 

In  the  first  place  Spain  never  intended,  of  set  purpose, 
to  ruin  the  material  prosperity  of  herself  or  her  colonies. 
Her  economic  history  is  one  long  lesson  to  prove  that 
any  prosperity  policy  is  a  delusion  and  a  path  to  ruin. 
TTiere  is  no  economic  lesson  which  the  people  of  the 
United  States  need  to  take  to  heart  more  than  that. 
In  the  second  place  the  Spanish  mistakes  arose,  in  part, 
from  confusing  the  public  treasury  with  the  national 
wealth.  They  thought  that,  when  gold  flowed  into  the 
public  treasury,  that  was  the  same  as  an  increase  of 
wealth  of  the  people.     It  really  meant  that  the  people 


308     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

were  bearing  the  burdens  of  the  imperial  system  and  that 
the  profits  of  it  went  into  the  pubHc  treasury;  that  is, 
into  the  hands  of  the  king.  It  was  no  wonder,  then, 
that  as  the  burdens  grew  greater  the  people  grew  poorer. 
The  king  spent  the  revenues  in  extending  the  imperial 
system  in  Germany,  Italy,  and  the  Netherlands,  so  that 
the  revenues  really  became  a  new  cause  of  corruption 
and  decay.  The  only  people  who  were  well  off,  in  the 
midst  of  the  increasing  distress,  were  the  ecclesiastics 
and  nobles,  who  were  protected  by  entails  and  charters, 
which,  in  their  turn,  were  a  new  cause  of  restriction  and 
destruction  to  the  industries  of  the  country.  As  to  the 
treatment  of  the  aborigines  in  the  outlying  possessions  of 
Spain,  the  orders  from  the  home  government  were  as 
good  as  could  possibly  be  desired.  No  other  European 
government  issued  any  which  were  nearly  so  enlightened 
or  testified  to  such  care  about  that  matter.  Spanish 
America  is  still  covered  with  institutions  founded  by 
Spain  for  the  benefit  of  the  aborigines,  so  far  as  they 
have  not  been  confiscated  or  diverted  to  other  uses. 
Nevertheless  the  Spanish  rule  nearly  exterminated  the 
aborigines  in  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  The  Pope 
gave  them  into  servitude  to  the  Spaniards.  The  Span- 
iards regarded  them  as  savages,  heretics,  beasts,  not 
entitled  to  human  consideration.  Here  you  have  the 
great  explanation  of  man's  inhumanity  to  man.  When 
Spaniards  tortured  and  burned  Protestants  and  Jews  it 
was  because,  in  their  minds,  Protestants  and  Jews  were 
heretics;  that  is  to  say,  were  beyond  the  pale,  were 
abominable,  were  not  entitled  to  human  consideration. 
Humane  men  and  pious  women  felt  no  more  compunc- 
tions at  the  sufferings  of  Protestants  and  Jews  than  we 
would  at  the  execution  of  mad  dogs  or  rattlesnakes. 
There  are  plenty  of  people  in  the  United  States  to-day 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         309 

who  regard  negroes  as  human  beings,  perhaps,  but  of  a 
different  order  from  white  men,  so  that  the  ideas  and  social 
arrangements  of  white  men  cannot  be  applied  to  them 
with  propriety.  Others  feel  the  same  way  about  Indians. 
This  attitude  of  mind,  wherever  you  meet  with  it,  is 
what  causes  tyranny  and  cruelty.  It  is  this  disposition 
to  decide  off-hand  that  some  people  are  not  fit  for 
Hberty  and  self-government  which  gives  relative  truth  to 
the  doctrine  that  all  men  are  equal,  and  inasmuch  as  the 
history  of  mankind  has  been  one  long  story  of  the  abuse 
of  some  by  others,  who,  of  course,  smoothed  over  their 
tyranny  by  some  beautiful  doctrines  of  religion,  or  ethics, 
or  political  philosophy,  which  proved  that  it  was  all  for 
the  best  good  of  the  oppressed,  therefore  the  doctrine 
that  all  men  are  equal  has  come  to  stand  as  one  of  the 
corner-stones  of  the  temple  of  justice  and  truth.  It  was 
set  up  as  a  bar  to  just  this  notion  that  we  are  so  much 
better  than  others  that  it  is  liberty  for  them  to  be  gov- 
erned by  us. 

The  Americans  have  been  committed  from  the  outset 
to  the  doctrine  that  all  men  are  equal.  We  have  elevated 
it  into  an  absolute  doctrine  as  a  part  of  the  theory  of  our 
social  and  political  fabric.  It  has  always  been  a  domestic 
dogma  in  spite  of  its  absolute  form,  and  as  a  domestic 
dogma  it  has  always  stood  in  glaring  contradiction  to 
the  facts  about  Indians  and  negroes  and  to  our  legisla- 
tion about  Chinamen.  In  its  absolute  form  it  must,  of 
course,  apply  to  Kanakas,  Malays,  Tagals,  and  Chinese 
just  as  much  as  to  Yankees,  Germans,  and  Irish.  It  is 
an  astonishing  event  that  we  have  lived  to  see  American 
arms  carry  this  domestic  dogma  out  where  it  must  be 
tested  in  its  application  to  uncivilized  and  half-civilized 
peoples.  At  the  first  touch  of  the  test  we  throw  the  doc- 
trine away  and  adopt  the  Spanish  doctrine.     We  are 


310     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

told  by  all  the  imperialists  that  these  people  are  not  fit 
for  liberty  and  self-government;  that  it  is  rebellion  for 
them  to  resist  our  beneficence;  that  we  must  send  fleets 
and  armies  to  kill  them  if  they  do  it;  that  we  must  devise 
a  government  for  them  and  administer  it  ourselves;  that 
we  may  buy  them  or  sell  them  as  we  please,  and  dispose 
of  their  "trade"  for  our  own  advantage.  What  is  that 
but  the  policy  of  Spain  to  her  dependencies?  What  can 
we  expect  as  a  consequence  of  it?  Nothing  but  that  it 
will  bring  us  where  Spain  is  now. 

But  then,  if  it  is  not  right  for  us  to  hold  these  islands 
as  dependencies,  you  may  ask  me  whether  I  think  that 
we  ought  to  take  them  into  our  Union,  at  least  some  of 
them,  and  let  them  help  to  govern  us.  Certainly  not. 
If  that  question  is  raised,  then  the  question  whether  they 
are,  in  our  judgment,  fit  for  self-government  or  not  is 
in  order.  The  American  people,  since  the  Civil  W^ar, 
have  to  a  great  extent  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  this 
state  of  ours,  the  United  States  of  America,  is  a  con- 
federated state  of  a  very  peculiar  and  artificial  form. 
It  is  not  a  state  like  the  states  of  Europe,  with  the 
exception  of  Switzerland.  The  field  for  dogmatism  in  our 
day  is  not  theology,  it  is  political  philosophy.  "Sover- 
eignty" is  the  most  abstract  and  metaphysical  term  in 
political  philosophy.  Nobody  can  define  it.  For  this 
reason  it  exactly  suits  the  purposes  of  the  curbstone 
statesman.  He  puts  into  it  whatever  he  wants  to  get 
out  of  it  again,  and  he  has  set  to  work  lately  to  spin  out 
a  proof  that  the  United  States  is  a  great  imperialistic 
state,  although  the  Constitution,  which  tells  us  just  what 
it  is  and  what  it  is  not,  is  there  to  prove  the  contrary. 

The  thirteen  colonies,  as  we  all  know,  were  independent 
commonwealths  with  respect  to  each  other.  They  had 
little  sympathy  and  a  great  deal  of  jealousy.     They  came 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         311 

into  a  union  with  each  other  upon  terms  which  were  stip- 
ulated and  defined  in  the  Constitution,  but  they  united 
only  unwillingly  and  under  the  pressure  of  necessity. 
What  was  at  first  only  a  loose  combination  or  alliance 
has  been  welded  together  into  a  great  state  by  the  his- 
tory of  a  century.  Nothing,  however,  has  altered  that 
which  was  the  first  condition  of  the  Union;  viz.,  that  all 
the  states  members  of  it  should  be  on  the  same  plane  of 
civilization  and  political  development;  that  they  should 
all  hold  the  same  ideas,  traditions,  and  political  creed; 
that  their  social  standards  and  ideals  should  be  such  as 
to  maintain  cordial  sympathy  between  them.  The  Civil 
War  arose  out  of  the  fact  that  this  condition  was  imper- 
fectly fulfilled.  At  other  times  actual  differences  in 
standpoint  and  principle,  or  in  ideals  and  opinion,  have 
produced  discord  within  the  confederation.  Such  crises 
are  inevitable  in  any  confederated  state.  It  is  the 
highest  statesmanship  in  such  a  system  to  avoid  them, 
or  smooth  them  over,  and  above  all,  never  to  take  in 
voluntarily  any  heterogeneous  elements.  The  prosperity 
of  such  a  state  depends  on  closer  and  closer  sympathy 
between  the  parts  in  order  that  differences  which  arise 
may  be  easily  harmonized.  What  we  need  is  more 
intension,  not  more  extension. 

It  follows,  then,  that  it  is  unwisdom  to  take  into  a 
State  like  this  any  foreign  element  which  is  not  congenial 
to  it.  Any  such  element  will  act  as  a  solvent  upon  it. 
Consequently  we  are  brought  by  our  new  conquests  face 
to  face  with  this  dilemma:  we  must  either  hold  them 
as  inferior  possessions,  to  be  ruled  and  exploited  by  us 
after  the  fashion  of  the  old  colonial  system,  or  we  must 
take  them  in  on  an  equality  with  ourselves,  where  they 
will  help  to  govern  us  and  to  corrupt  a  political  system 
which  they  do  not  understand  and  in  which  they  cannot 


312     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

participate.  From  that  dilemma  there  is  no  escape 
except  to  give  them  independence  and  to  let  them  work 
out  their  own  salvation  or  go  without  it.  Hayti  has 
been  independent  for  a  century  and  has  been  a  theater 
of  revolution,  tyranny,  and  bloodshed  all  the  time. 
There  is  not  a  Spanish-American  state  which  has  proved 
its  capacity  for  self-government  as  yet.  It  is  a  fair  ques- 
tion whether  any  one  of  them  would  have  been  worse 
off  than  it  is  to-day  if  Spanish  rule  had  been  maintained 
in  it.  The  chief  exception  is  Mexico.  Mr.  Lummis,  an 
American,  has  recently  published  a  book  on  Mexico, 
in  which  he  tells  us  that  we  would  do  well  to  go  to 
school  to  Mexico  for  a  number  of  important  public 
interests,  but  Mexico  has  been,  for  ten  or  fifteen  years, 
under  a  dictator,  and  the  republican  forms  have  been  in 
abeyance.  What  will  happen  there  when  the  dictator 
dies  nobody  knows.  The  doctrine  that  we  are  to  take 
away  from  other  nations  any  possessions  of  theirs  which 
we  think  that  we  could  manage  better  than  they  are 
managing  them,  or  that  we  are  to  take  in  hand  any  coun- 
tries which  we  do  not  think  capable  of  self-government,  is 
one  which  will  lead  us  very  far.  W^ith  that  doctrine  in 
the  background,  our  politicians  will  have  no  trouble  to 
find  a  war  ready  for  us  the  next  time  that  they  come 
around  to  the  point  where  they  think  that  it  is  time  for 
us  to  have  another.  W^e  are  told  that  we  must  have  a 
big  army  hereafter.  ^Yhat  for;  unless  we  propose  to  do 
again  by  and  by  what  we  have  just  done.?  In  that 
case  our  neighbors  have  reason  to  ask  themselves  whom 
we  w^ill  attack  next.  They  must  begin  to  arm,  too,  and 
by  our  act  the  whole  western  world  is  plunged  into  the 
distress  under  which  the  eastern  world  is  groaning.  Here 
is  another  point  in  regard  to  which  the  conservative 
elements  in  the  country  are  making  a  great  mistake  to 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN  313 

allow  all  this  militarism  and  imperialism  to  go  on  without 
protest.     It  will  be  established  as  a  rule  that,  whenever 
political  ascendency  is  threatened,  it  can  be  established 
again  by  a  little  war,  filling  the  minds  of  the  people  with 
glory  and  diverting  their  attention  from  their  own  inter- 
ests.    Hard-headed  old  Benjamin  Franklin  hit  the  point 
when,  referring  back  to  the  days  of  Marlborough,  he    \ 
talked   about  the  "pest  of  glory."     The  thirst  for  glory 
is  an  epidemic  which  robs  a  people  of  their  judgment,    | 
seduces  their  vanity,  cheats  them  of  their  interests,  andy 
corrupts  their  consciences. 

This  country  owes  its  existence  to  a  revolt  against  the 
colonial  and  navigation  system  which,  as  I  have  said, 
Spain  first  put  in  practice.  The  English  colonial  system 
never  was  even  approximately  so  harsh  and  tyrannical 
as  that  of  Spain.  The  first  great  question  which  arose 
about  colonies  in  England  was  whether  they  were  parts 
of  the  possessions  of  the  king  of  England  or  part  of  the 
dominion  of  the  crown.  The  constitutional  difference 
was  great.  In  the  one  case  they  were  subject  to  the 
king  and  were  not  under  the  constitutional  guarantees; 
in  the  other  case  they  were  subject  to  the  Parliament 
and  were  under  the  constitutional  guarantees.  This  is 
exactly  the  same  question  which  arose  in  the  middle  of 
this  century  in  this  country  about  territories,  and  which 
helped  to  bring  on  the  Civil  War.  It  is  already  arising 
again.  It  is  the  question  whether  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  extends  over  all  men  and  territory 
owned  by  the  United  States,  or  whether  there  are  to  be 
grades  and  planes  of  rights  for  different  parts  of  the 
dominions  over  which  our  flag  waves.  This  question 
already  promises  to  introduce  dissensions  amongst  us 
which  will  touch  the  most  vital  elements  in  our  national 
existence. 


314     ESSAYS  OF  WILLL\M  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

The  constitutional  question,  however,  goes  even  deeper 
than  this.  Of  the  interpretation  of  clauses  in  the  Con- 
stitution I  am  not  competent  to  speak,  but  the  Consti- 
tution is  the  organic  law  of  this  confederated  state  in 
which  we  live,  and  therefore  it  is  the  description  of  it 
as  it  was  planned  and  as  it  is.  \  The  question  at  stake  is 
nothing  less  than  the  integrity  of  this  state  in  its  most 
essential  elements.  The  expansionists  have  recognized 
this  fact  by  already  casting  the  Constitution  aside.  The 
military  men,  of  course,  have  been  the  first  to  do  this. 
It  is  of  the  essence  of  militarism  that  under  it  military 
men  learn  to  despise  constitutions,  to  sneer  at  parlia- 
ments, and  to  look  with  contempt  on  civilians.  Some 
of  the  imperialists  are  not  ready  to  go  quite  so  fast  as 
yet.  They  have  remonstrated  against  the  military  doc- 
,  trine,  but  that  only  proves  that  the  mxilitary  men  see  the 
point  at  issue  better  than  the  others  do.  Others  say 
that  if  the  legs  of  the  Constitution  are  too  short  to  straddle 
the  gulf  between  the  old  policy  and  the  new,  they  can  be 
stretched  a  little,  a  view  of  the  matter  which  is  as  flippant 
as  it  is  in  bad  taste.  It  would  require  too  much  time  to 
notice  the  various  contemptuous  and  jaunty  references 
to  the  Constitution  which  every  day  brings  to  our  notice, 
and  from  the  same  class,  at  least,  who,  two  years  ago, 
were  so  shocked  at  a  criticism  of  the  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  which  was  inserted  in  the  Chicago  platform. 
.  The  question  of  imperialism,  then,  is  the  question 
whether  w^e  are  going  to  give  the  lie  to  the  origin  of  our 
own  national  existence  by  establishing  a  colonial  system 
of  the  old  Spanish  type,  even  if  we  have  to  sacrifice  our 
existing  civil  and  political  system  to  do  it.  I  submit 
that  it  is  a  strange  incongruity  to  utter  grand  platitudes 
about  the  blessings  of  liberty,  etc.,  which  we  are  going 
to  impart  to  these  people,  and  to  begin  by  refusing  to 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.  S.  BY  SPAIN         315 

extend  the  Constitution  over  them,  and  still  more,  by 
throwing  the  Constitution  into  the  gutter  here  at  home. 
If  you  take  away  the  Constitution,  what  is  American 
liberty  and  all  the  rest?     Nothing  but  a  lot  of  phrases. 
I   Some  will  answer  me  that  they  do  not  intend  to  adopt 
any  Spanish  colonial  system;  that  they  intend  to  imitate 
the    modern    English    policy    with    respect    to    colonies. 
The  proudest  fact  in  the  history  of  England  is  thatrsince" 
the  Napoleonic  wars,  she  has  steadily  corrected  abuses, 
amended  her  institutions,  redressed  grievances,  and  so 
has  made  her  recent  history  a  story  of  amelioration  of  all 
her  institutions,  social,  political,  and  civil.     To  do  this 
she  has  had  to  overcome  old  traditions,  established  cus- 
toms, vested  rights,  and  all  the  other  obstacles  which 
retard  or  prevent  social  improvement.     The  consequence 
is   that   the  traditions  of   her   public  service,  in  all  its 
branches,  have  been  purified,  and  that  a  body  of  men 
has  grown  up  who  have  a  noble  spirit,  high  motives, 
honorable    methods,    and    excellent    standards.     At    the 
same  time  the  policy  of  the  country  has  been  steadily 
growing  more  and  more  enlightened  in  regard  to  all  the 
great  interests  of  society.     These  triumphs  of  peace  are 
far  greater  than  any  triumphs  of  war.     It  takes  more 
national  grit  to  correct  abuses  than  to  win  battles.     Eng- 
land has  shown  herself  very  willing  indeed  to  learn  from 
us  whatever  we  could  teach,  and  we  might  learn  a  great 
deal  from  her  on  matters  far  more  important  than  colonial 
policy.     Her  reform  of  her  colonial  policy  is  only  a  part, 
and  perhaps  a  consequence,  of  the  improvements  made 
elsewhere  in  her  political  system. 

We  have  had  some  experience  this  last  summer  in  the 
attempt  to  improvise  an  army.  We  may  be  very  sure 
that  it  is  equally  impossible  to  improvise  a  colonial  sys- 
tem.    The  present  Enghsh  colonial  system  is  aristocratic. 


316     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

It  depends  upon  a  large  body  of  specially  trained  men, 
acting  under  traditions  which  have  become  well  estab- 
lished, and  with  a  firm  esprit  de  corps.  Nobody  can  get 
into  it  without  training.  The  system  is  foreign  to  our 
ideas,  tastes,  and  methods.  It  would  require  a  long 
time  and  radical  changes  in  our  political  methods,  which 
we  are  not  as  yet  at  all  disposed  to  make,  to  establish 
any  such  thing  here,  and  then  it  would  be  an  imitation. 
Moreover,  England  has  three  different  colonial  systems, 
according  to  the  development  of  the  resident  population 
in  each  colony  or  dependency,  and  the  selection  of  the 
one  of  these  three  systems  which  we  will  adopt  and  apply 
involves  all  the  difficulties  which  I  have  been  discussing. 
There  is,  however,  another  objection  to  the  English 
system.  A  great  many  people  talk  about  the  revenue 
which  we  are  to  get  from  these  possessions.  If  we  attempt 
to  get  any  revenues  from  them  we  shall  repeat  the  con- 
duct of  England  towards  her  colonies  against  which  they 
revolted.  England  claimed  that  it  was  reasonable  that 
the  colonies  should  pay  their  share  of  imperial  expenses 
which  were  incurred  for  the  benefit  of  all.  I  have  never 
been  able  to  see  why  that  was  not  a  fair  demand.  As 
you  know,  the  colonies  spurned  it  with  indignation,  on 
the  ground  that  the  taxation,  being  at  the  discretion  of 
a  foreign  power,  might  be  made  unjust.  Our  historians 
and  publicists  have  taught  us  that  the  position  of  the 
colonists  was  right  and  heroic,  and  the  only  one  worthy 
of  freemen.  The  revolt  was  made  on  the  principle  of  no 
taxation,  not  on  the  size  of  the  tax.  The  colonists  Vv^ould 
not  pay  a  penny.  Since  that  is  so,  we  cannot  get  a  penny 
of  revenue  from  the  dependencies,  even  for  their  fair 
share  of  imperial  expenditures,  without  burning  up  all 
our  histories,  revising  all  the  great  principles  of  our 
heroic  period,  repudiating  our  great  men  of  that  period, 


CONQUEST  OF  THE   U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         317 

and  going  over  to  the  Spanish  doctrine  of  taxing  depend- 
encies at  the  discretion  of  the  governing  State.  Already 
one  of  these  dependencies  is  in  arms  strugghng  for  Kberty 
against  us.  Read  the  threats  of  the  imperialists  against 
these  people,  who  dare  to  rebel  against  us,  and  see  whether 
I  am  misstating  or  exaggerating  the  corruption  of  im- 
perialism on  ourselves.  The  question  is  once  more, 
whether  we  are  prepared  to  repudiate  the  principles 
which  we  have  been  insisting  on  for  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  and  to  embrace  those  of  which  Spain  is  the 
oldest  and  most  conspicuous  representative,  or  not. 

In  regard  to  this  matter  of  taxation  and  revenue,  the 
present  English  colonial  system  is  as  unjust  to  the  mother- 
country  as  the  old  system  was  to  the  colonies,  or  more 
so.  The  colonies  now  tax  the  mother-country.  She 
pays  large  expenses  for  their  advantage,  for  which  they 
return  nothing.  They  set  up  tax  barriers  against  her 
trade  with  them.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  United  States 
will  ever  consent  to  any  such  system,  and  I  am  clear  in 
the  opinion  that  they  never  ought  to.  If  the  colonies 
ought  not  to  be  made  tributary  to  the  mother-country, 
neither  ought  the  mother-country  to  be  made  tributary 
to  them.  The  proposition  to  imitate  England's  colonial 
policy  is  evidently  made  without  the  necessary  knowledge 
of  what  it  means,  and  it  proves  that  those  who  thrust 
aside  prudent  objections  by  declaring  off-hand  that  we 
will  imitate  England  have  not  any  serious  comprehension 
of  what  it  is  that  they  propose  to  us  to  do. 

The  conclusion  of  this  branch  of  the  subject  is  that  it^ 
is  fundamentally  antagonistic  to  our  domestic  system  to 
hold  dependencies  which  are  unfit  to  enter  into  the  Union. 
Our  system  cannot  be  extended  to  take  them  in  or  ad- 
justed to  them  to  keep  them  out  without  sacrificing  its 
integrity.     If  we  take  in  dependencies  which,  as  we  now 


318     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

agree,  are  not  fit  to  come  in  as  states,  there  will  be  con- 
stant political  agitation  to  admit  them  as  states,  for  such 
agitation  will  be  fomented  by  any  party  which  thinks 
that  it  can  win  votes  in  that  way.  It  was  an  enormous 
blunder  in  statecraft  to  engage  in  a  war  which  w^s  sure 
to  bring  us  into  this  predicament. 

II.  It  seems  as  if  this  new  policy  was  destined  to 
thrust  a  sword  into  every  joint  in  our  historical  and 
philosophical  system.  Our  ancestors  revolted  against 
the  colonial  and  navigation  system,  but  as  soon  as  they 
got  their  independence,  they  fastened  a  navigation  system 
on  themselves.  The  consequence  is  that  our  industry 
and  commerce  are  to-day  organized  under  a  restrictive 
system  which  is  the  direct  offspring  of  the  old  Spanish 
restrictive  system,  and  is  based  on  the  same  ideas  of 
economic  policy;  viz.,  that  statesmen  can  devise  a  pros- 
perity policy  for  a  country  which  will  do  more  for  it 
than  a  spontaneous  development  of  the  energy  of  the 
people  and  the  resources  of  the  territory  would  do.  On 
the  other  hand,  inside  of  the  Union  we  have  established 
the  grandest  experiment  in  absolute  free  trade  that  has 
ever  existed.  The  combination  of  the  two  is  not  new, 
because  it  is  just  what  Colbert  tried  in  France,  but  it  is 
original  here  and  is  an  interesting  result  of  the  presence 
in  men's  minds  of  two  opposite  philosophies,  the  adjust- 
ment of  which  has  never  yet  been  fought  out.  The 
extension  of  our  authority  over  these  new  territories 
forces  the  inconsistency  between  our  internal  and  our 
external  policy  out  of  the  field  of  philosophy  into  that 
of  practical  politics.  Wherever  the  boundary  line  of  the 
national  system  falls  we  have  one  rule  inside  of  it  and 
another  outside  of  it.  Are  the  new  territories  to  be  taken 
inside  or  to  be  treated  as  outside.'^  If  we  develop  this 
dilemma,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  of  the  first  importance. 


CONQUEST  OF  THE   U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         319 

If  we  treat  the  dependencies  as  inside  the  national 
system,  we  must  have  absolute  free  trade  with  them. 
Then  if,  on  the  policy  of  the  "open  door,"  we  allow  all 
others  to  go  to  them  on  the  same  terms  as  ourselves, 
the  dependencies  will  have  free  trade  with  all  the  world, 
while  we  are  under  the  restrictive  system  ourselves. 
Then,  too,  the  dependencies  can  obtain  no  revenues  by 
import  duties. 

If  we  take  the  other  branch  of  the  dilemma  and  treat 
the  dependencies  as  outside  of  our  national  policy,  then 
we  must  shut  out  their  products  from  our  market  by 
taxes.  If  we  do  this  on  the  policy  of  the  "open  door," 
then  any  taxes  which  the  islands  lay  upon  imports  from 
elsewhere  they  must  also  lay  upon  imports  from  us. 
Then  they  and  we  will  be  taxing  each  other.  If  we  go 
upon  the  protectionist  policy,  we  shall  determine  our 
taxes  against  them  and  theirs  against  other  nations,  and 
we  shall  let  them  lay  none  against  us.  That  is  exactly 
the  Spanish  system.  Under  it  the  colonies  will  be  crushed 
between  the  upper  and  the  nether  millstone.  They  will 
revolt  against  us  for  just  the  same  reason  for  which  they 
revolted  against  Spain. 

I  have  watched  the  newspapers  with  great  interest  for 
six  months,  to  see  what  indications  were  presented  of 
the  probable  currents  of  opinion  on  the  dilemma  which 
I  have  described.  There  have  been  but  few.  A  few 
extreme  protectionist  newspapers  have  truculently  de- 
clared that  our  protective  system  was  to  be  extended 
around  our  possessions,  and  that  everybody  else  was  to 
be  excluded  from  them.  From  a  number  of  interviews 
and  letters,  by  private  individuals,  I  select  the  following 
as  expressing  well  what  is  sure  to  be  the  view  of  the  unre- 
generate  man,  especially  if  he  has  an  interest  to  be  pro- 
tected as  this  writer  had. 


320     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

"I  am  opposed  to  the  *open  door'  policy,  as  I  under- 
stand it.  To  open  the  ports  of  our  new  territories  free 
to  the  world  would  have  the  ejffect  of  cheapening  or 
destroying  many  of  the  benefits  of  territorial  acquisition, 
which  has  cost  us  blood  and  money.  As  a  nation  we  are 
well  qualified  to  develop  and  handle  the  trade  of  our  new 
possessions,  and  by  permitting  others  to  come  in  and 
divide  the  advantages  and  profits  of  this  trade  we  not 
only  wrong  our  own  citizens,  who  should  be  given  prefer- 
ence, but  exhibit  a  weakness  that  ill  becomes  a  nation  of 
our  prominence." 

This  is  exactly  the  view  which  was  held  in  Spain, 
France,  Holland,  and  England  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  upon  which  the  navigation  system,  against  which 
our  fathers  revolted,  was  founded.  If  we  adopt  this 
view  we  may  count  upon  it  that  we  shall  be  embroiled 
in  constant  wars  with  other  nations,  which  wdll  not  con- 
sent that  we  should  shut  them  out  of  parts  of  the  earth's 
surface  until  we  prove  that  we  can  do  it  by  force.  Then 
we  shall  be  parties  to  a  renewal  of  all  the  eighteenth 
century  wars  for  colonies,  for  supremacy  on  the  sea,  for 
"trade,"  as  the  term  is  used,  for  world  supremacy,  and 
for  all  the  rest  of  the  heavy  follies  from  which  our  fathers 
fought  to  free  themselves.  That  is  the  policy  of  Russia 
and  France  at  the  present  time,  and  we  have  before  our 
eyes  proofs  of  its  effect  on  the  peace  and  welfare  of  man- 
kind. 

Our  modern  protectionists  have  always  told  us  that 
the  object  of  their  policy  is  to  secure  the  home  market. 
They  have  pushed  their  system  to  an  extravagant  excess. 
The  free  traders  used  to  tell  them  that  they  were  con- 
structing a  Chinese  wall.  They  answered  that  they 
wished  we  were  separated  from  other  nations  by  a  gulf 
of  fire.     Now  it  is  they  who  are  crying  out  that  they  are 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         321 

shut  in  by  a  Chinese  wall.  When  we  have  shut  all  the 
world  out,  we  find  that  we  have  shut  ourselves  in.  The 
protective  system  is  applied  especially  to  certain  selected 
lines  of  production.  Of  course  these  are  stimulated  out 
of  proportion  to  the  requirements  of  the  community,  and 
so  are  exposed  to  sharp  fluctuations  of  high  profits  and 
over-production.  At  great  expense  and  loss  we  have 
carried  out  the  policy  of  the  home  market,  and  now  we 
are  called  upon  at  great  expense  and  loss  to  go  out  and 
conquer  territory  in  order  to  widen  the  market.  In 
order  to  have  trade  with  another  community  the  first 
condition  is  that  we  must  produce  what  they  want  and 
they  must  produce  what  we  want.  That  is  the  economic 
condition.  The  second  condition  is  that  there  must  be 
peace  and  security  and  freedom  from  arbitrary  obstacles 
interposed  by  government.  This  is  the  political  condi- 
tion. If  these  conditions  are  fulfilled,  there  will  be 
trade,  no  matter  whether  the  two  communities  are  in 
one  body  politic  or  not.  If  these  conditions  are  not 
fulfilled,  there  will  be  no  trade,  no  matter  what  flag  floats. 
If  we  want  more  trade  we  can  get  it  any  day  by  a  reci- 
procity treaty  with  Canada,  and  it  will  be  larger  and  more 
profitable  than  that  of  all  the  Spanish  possessions.  It  will 
cost  us  nothing  to  get  it.  Yet  while  we  were  fighting  for 
Puerto  Rico  and  Manila,  and  spending  three  or  four 
hundred  millions  to  get  them,  negotiations  with  Canada 
failed  through  the  narrow-mindedness  and  bigotry  which 
we  brought  to  the  negotiation.  Conquest  can  do  noth- 
ing for  trade  except  to  remove  the  political  obstacles 
which  the  conquered  could  not,  or  would  not,  remove. 
From  this  it  follows  that  the  only  justification  for  terri- 
torial extension  is  the  extension  of  free  and  enlightened 
policies  in  regard  to  commerce.  Even  then  extension  is 
an  irksome  necessity.     The  question  always  is,  whether 


322     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

you  are  taking  an  asset  or  a  liability.  Land  grabbing 
means  properly  taking  territory  and  shutting  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  out  of  it,  so  as  to  exploit  it  ourselves.  It  is 
not  land  grabbing  to  take  it  and  police  it  and  throw  it 
open  to  all.  This  is  the  policy  of  the  "open  door."  Our 
external  commercial  policy  is,  in  all  its  principles,  the 
same  as  that  of  Spain.  We  had  no  justification,  on  that 
ground,  in  taking  anything  away  from  her.  If  we  now 
seek  to  justify  ourselves,  it  must  be  by  going  over  to  the 
free  policy;  but,  as  I  have  shown,  that  forces  to  a  crisis 
the  contradiction  between  our  domestic  and  our  external 
policy  as  to  trade.  It  is  very  probable,  indeed,  that  the 
destruction  of  our  restrictive  system  will  be  the  first 
good  result  of  expansion,  but  my  object  here  has  been 
to  show  what  a  network  of  difficulties  environ  us  in 
the  attempt  to  establish  a  commercial  policy  for  these 
dependencies.  We  have  certainly  to  go  through  years  of 
turmoil  and  political  bitterness,  with  all  the  consequent 
chances  of  internal  dissension,  before  these  difficulties 
can  be  overcome. 

III.  Another  phenomenon  which  deserves  earnest  at- 
tention from  the  student  of  contemporaneous  history 
and  of  the  trend  of  political  institutions  is  the  failure  of 
the  masses  of  our  people  to  perceive  the  iiievitable  effect 
of  imperialism  on  democracy.  On  the  twenty-ninth  of  last 
November  [1898]  the  Prime  Minister  of  France  was 
quoted  in  a  cable  dispatch  as  follows:  "For  twenty-eight 
years  we  have  lived  under  a  contradiction.  The  army 
and  democracy  subsist  side  by  side.  The  maintenance 
of  the  traditions  of  the  army  is  a  menace  to  liberty,  yet 
they  assure  the  safety  of  the  country  and  its  most  sacred 
duties." 

That  antagonism  of  democracy  and  militarism  is  now 
coming  to  a  crisis  in  France,  and  militarism  is  sure  to 


CONQUEST  OF  THE   U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         323 

win,  because  the  French  people  would  make  any  other 
sacrifice  rather  than  diminish  their  military  strength. 
In  Germany  the  attempt  has  been  going  on  for  thirty 
years  to  estabhsh  constitutional  government  with  parHa- 
mentary  institutions.  The  parts  of  the  German  system 
are  at  war  with  each  other.  The  Emperor  constantly 
interferes  with  the  operation  of  the  system  and  utters 
declarations  which  are  entirely  personal.  He  is  not 
responsible  and  cannot  be  answered  or  criticised.  The 
situation  is  not  so  delicate  as  in  France,  but  it  is  exceed- 
ingly unstable.  All  the  desire  of  Germans  for  self-govern- 
ment and  civil  liberty  runs  out  into  socialism,  and  socialism 
is  repressed  by  force  or  by  trickery.  The  conservative 
classes  of  the  country  acquiesce  in  the  situation  while 
they  deplore  it.  The  reason  is  because  the  Emperor  is 
the  war  lord.  His  power  and  authority  are  essential  to 
the  military  strength  of  the  State  in  face  of  its  neighbors. 
That  is  the  preponderating  consideration  to  which  every- 
thing else  has  to  yield,  and  the  consequence  of  it  is  that 
there  is  to-day  scarcely  an  institution  in  Germany  except 
the  army. 

Everywhere  you  go  on  the  continent  of  Europe  at 
this  hour  you  see  the  conflict  between  militarism  and 
industrialism.  You  see  the  expansion  of  industrial  power 
pushed  forward  by  the  energy,  hope,  and  thrift  of  men, 
and  you  see  the  development  arrested,  diverted,  crippled, 
and  defeated  by  measures  which  are  dictated  by  military 
considerations.  At  the  same  time  the  press  is  loaded 
down  with  discussions  about  political  economy,  political 
philosophy,  and  social  policy.  They  are  discussing  pov- 
erty, labor,  socialism,  charity,  reform,  and  social  ideals, 
and  are  boasting  of  enlightenment  and  progress,  at  the 
same  time  that  the  things  which  are  done  are  dictated 
by  none  of  these  considerations,  but  only  by  military 


324     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

interests.  It  is  militarism  which  is  eating  up  all  the 
products  of  science  and  art,  defeating  the  energy  of  the 
population  and  wasting  its  savings.  It  is  militarism 
which  forbids  the  people  to  give  their  attention  to  the 
problems  of  their  own  welfare  and  to  give  their  strength 
to  the  education  and  comfort  of  their  children.  It  is 
militarism  which  is  combating  the  grand  eflPorts  of  science 
and  art  to  ameliorate  the  struggle  for  existence. 

The  American  people  believe  that  they  have  a  free 
country,  and  w^e  are  treated  to  grandiloquent  speeches 
about  our  flag  and  our  reputation  for  freedom  and 
enlightenment.  The  common  opinion  is  that  we  have 
these  things  because  we  have  chosen  and  adopted  them, 
because  they  are  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
the  Constitution.  We  suppose,  therefore,  that  we  are 
sure  to  keep  them  and  that  the  follies  of  other  people 
are  things  which  we  can  hear  about  with  complacency. 
People  say  that  this  country  is  like  no  other;  that  its 
prosperity  proves  its  exceptionality,  and  so  on.  These 
are  popular  errors  which  in  time  will  meet  with  harsh 
correction.  The  United  States  is  in  a  protected  situa- 
tion. It  is  easy  to  have  equality  where  land  is  abundant 
and  where  the  population  is  small.  It  is  easy  to  have 
prosperity  where  a  few  men  have  a  great  continent  to 
exploit.  It  is  easy  to  have  liberty  when  you  have  no 
dangerous  neighbors  and  when  the  struggle  for  existence 
is  easy.  There  are  no  severe  penalties,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, for  political  mistakes.  Democracy  is  not 
then  a  thing  to  be  nursed  and  defended,  as  it  is  in  an 
old  country  like  France.  It  is  rooted  and  founded  in 
the  economic  circumstances  of  the  country.  The  orators 
and  constitution-makers  do  not  make  democracy.  They 
are  made  by  it.  This  protected  position,  however,  is 
sure  to  pass  away.     As  the  country  fills  up  w^th  popu- 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         325 

lation,  and  the  task  of  getting  a  living  out  of  the  ground 
becomes  more  difficult,  the  struggle  for  existence  will 
become  harder  and  the  competition  of  life  more  severe. 
Then  liberty  and  democracy  will  cost  something,  if  they 
are  to  be  maintained. 

Now  what  will  hasten  the  day  when  our  present  advan- 
tages will  wear  out  and  when  we  shall  come  down  to  the 
conditions  of  the  older  and  densely  populated  nations? 
The  answer  is:  war,  debt,  taxation,  diplomacy,  a  grand 
governmental  system,  pomp,  glory,  a  big  army  and  navy, 
lavish  expenditures,  political  jobbery  —  in  a  word,  im- 
perialism. In  the  old  days  the  democratic  masses  of 
this  country,  who  knew  little  about  our  modern  doctrines 
of  social  philosophy,  had  a  sound  instinct  on  these  mat- 
ters, and  it  is  no  small  ground  of  political  disquietude  to 
see  it  decline.  They  resisted  every  appeal  to  their  vanity 
in  the  way  of  pomp  and  glory  which  they  knew  must  be 
paid  for.  They  dreaded  a  public  debt  and  a  standing 
army.  They  were  narrow-minded  and  went  too  far  with 
these  notions,  but  they  were,  at  least,  right,  if  they  wanted 
to  strengthen  democracy. 

The  great  foe  of  democracy  now  and  in  the  near  future 
is  plutocracy.  Every  year  that  passes  brings  out  this 
antagonism  more  distinctly.  It  is  to  be  the  social  war 
of  the  twentieth  century.  In  that  war  militarism,  ex- 
pansion and  imperialism  will  all  favor  plutocracy.  In 
the  first  place,  war  and  expansion  will  favor  jobbery, 
both  in  the  dependencies  and  at  home.  In  the  second 
place,  they  will  take  away  the  attention  of  the  people 
from  what  the  plutocrats  are  doing.  In  the  third  place, 
they  will  cause  large  expenditures  of  the  people's  money, 
the  return  for  which  will  not  go  into  the  treasury,  but 
into  the  hands  of  a  few  schemers.  In  the  fourth  place, 
they  will  call  for  a  large  public  debt  and  taxes,  and  these 


326     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

things  especially  tend  to  make  men  unequal,  because  any 
social  burdens  bear  more  heavily  on  the  weak  than  on 
the  strong,  and  so  make  the  weak  weaker  and  the  strong 
stronger.  Therefore  expansion  and  imperialism  are  a 
grand  onslaught  on  democracy. 

The  point  which  I  have  tried  to  make  in  this  lecture  is 
that  expansion  and  imperialism  are  at  war  with  the  best 
traditions,  principles,  and  interests  of  the  American  people, 
and  that  they  will  plunge  us  into  a  network  of  difficult 
problems  and  political  perils,  which  we  might  have 
avoided,  while  they  offer  us  no  corresponding  advantage 
in  return. 

Of  course  "principles,"  phrases,  and  catch- words  are 
always  invented  to  bolster  up  any  policy  which  anybody 
wants  to  recommend.  So  in  this  case.  The  people  who 
have  led  us  on  to  shut  ourselves  in,  and  who  now  want 
us  to  break  out,  warn  us  against  the  terrors  of  "isola- 
tion." Our  ancestors  all  came  here  to  isolate  themselves 
from  the  social  burdens  and  inherited  errors  of  the  old 
world.  When  the  others  are  all  over  ears  in  trouble, 
who  would  not  be  isolated  in  freedom  from  care.'^  WTien 
the  others  are  crushed  under  the  burden  of  mihtarism, 
who  would  not  be  isolated  in  peace  and  industry.^  When 
the  others  are  all  struggling  under  debt  and  taxes,  who 
would  not  be  isolated  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  own  earn- 
ings for  the  benefit  of  his  own  family.^  WTien  the  rest 
are  all  in  a  quiver  of  anxiety,  lest  at  a  day's  notice  they 
miay  be  involved  in  a  social  cataclysm,  who  would  not 
be  isolated  out  of  reach  of  the  disaster.^  W^hat  we  are 
doing  is  that  we  are  abandoning  this  blessed  isolation  to 
run  after  a  share  in  the  trouble. 

The  expansionists  answer  our  remonstrances  on  behalf 
of  the  great  American  principles  by  saying  that  times 
have  changed  and  that  we  have  outlived  the  fathers  of 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         327 

the  republic  and  their  doctrines.  As  far  as  the  authority 
of  the  great  men  is  concerned,  that  may  well  be  sacrificed 
without  regret.  Authority  of  persons  and  names  is  a 
dangerous  thing.  Let  us  get  at  the  truth  and  the  right. 
I,  for  my  part,  am  also  afraid  of  the  great  principles, 
and  I  would  make  no  fight  on  their  behalf.  In  the  ten 
years  before  the  Revolution  our  ancestors  invented  a  fine 
lot  of  "principles"  which  they  thought  would  help  their 
case.  They  repudiated  many  of  them  as  soon  as  they 
got  their  independence,  and  the  rest  of  them  have  since 
made  us  a  great  deal  of  trouble.  I  have  examined  them 
all  critically,  and  there  is  not  one  of  them  which  I  consider 
sound,  as  it  is  popularly  understood.  I  have  been  de- 
nounced as  a  heretic  on  this  account  by  people  who  now 
repudiate  them  all  in  a  sentence.  But  this  only  clears 
the  ground  for  the  real  point.  There  is  a  consistency  of 
character  for  a  nation  as  well  as  for  a  man.  A  man 
who  changes  his  principles  from  week  to  week  is  destitute 
of  character  and  deserves  no  confidence.  The  great  men 
of  this  nation  were  such  because  they  embodied  and 
expressed  the  opinion  and  sentiments  of  the  nation  in 
their  time.  Their  names  are  something  more  than  clubs 
with  which  to  knock  an  opponent  down  when  it  suits 
one's  purpose,  but  to  be  thrown  away  with  contempt 
when  they  happen  to  be  on  the  other  side.  So  of  the 
great  principles;  whether  some  of  us  are  skeptical  about 
their  entire  validity  and  want  to  define  and  limit  them 
somewhat  is  of  little  importance.  If  the  nation  has 
accepted  them,  sworn  by  them,  founded  its  legislation 
on  them,  im-bedded  them  in  the  decisions  of  its  courts, 
and  then  if  it  throws  them  away  at  six  months'  warning, 
you  may  depend  upon  it  that  that  nation  will  suffer  in 
its  moral  and  political  rectitude  a  shock  of  the  severest 
kind.     Three  years  ago  we  were  ready  to  fight  Great 


328     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

Britain  to  make  her  arbitrate  a  quarrel  which  she  had 
with  Venezuela.  The  question  about  the  Maine  was  one 
of  the  fittest  subjects  for  arbitration  that  ever  arose 
between  two  nations,  and  we  refused  to  listen  to  such 
a  proposition.  Three  years  ago,  if  you  had  said  that 
any  proposition  put  forth  by  anybody  was  "Enghsh," 
he  might  have  been  mobbed  in  the  streets.  Now  the 
English  are  our  beloved  friends,  and  we  are  going  to 
try  to  imitate  them  and  adopt  their  way  of  doing  things. 
They  are  encouraging  us  to  go  into  difficulties,  first 
because  our  hands  will  be  full  and  we  shall  be  unable 
to  interfere  elsewhere,  and  secondly,  because  if  we  are 
in  difficulties  we  shall  need  allies,  and  they  think  that 
they  will  be  our  first  choice  as  such.  Some  of  our  public 
journals  have  been  pouring  out  sentimental  drivel  for 
years  about  arbitration,  but  last  summer  they  turned 
around  and  began  to  pour  out  sentimental  drivel  about 
the  benefits  of  war.  We  congratulate  ourselves  all  the 
time  on  the  increased  means  of  producing  wealth,  and 
then  we  take  the  opposite  fit  and  commit  some  great 
folly  in  order  to  prove  that  there  is  something  grander 
than  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  Three  years  ago  we  were 
on  the  verge  of  a  law  to  keep  immigrants  out  who  were 
not  good  enough  to  be  in  with  us.  Now  we  are  going 
to  take  in  eight  million  barbarians  and  semi-barbarians, 
and  we  are  paying  twenty  million  dollars  to  get  them. 
For  thirty  years  the  negro  has  been  in  fashion.  He  has 
had  political  value  and  has  been  petted.  Now  we  have 
made  friends  with  the  Southerners.  They  and  we  are 
hugging  each  other.  We  are  all  united.  The  negro's 
day  is  over.  He  is  out  of  fashion.  We  cannot  treat 
him  one  way  and  the  Malays,  Tagals,  and  Kanakas 
another  way.  A  Southern  senator  two  or  three  days 
ago  thanked  an  expansionist  senator  from  Connecticut 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         329 

for  enunciating  doctrines  which  proved  that,  for  the  last 
thirty  years,  the  Southerners  have  been  right  all  the 
time,  and  his  inference  was  incontrovertible.  So  the 
"great  principles"  change  all  the  time;  or,  what  is  far 
more  important,  the  phrases  change.  Some  go  out  of 
fashion,  others  come  in;  but  the  phrase-makers  are  with 
us  all  the  time.  So  when  our  friends  the  expansionists 
tell  us  that  times  have  changed,  what  it  means  is  that 
they  have  a  whole  set  of  new  phrases  which  they  want 
to  force  into  the  place  of  the  old  ones.  The  new  ones 
are  certainly  no  more  valid  than  the  old  ones.  All  the 
validity  that  the  great  principles  ever  had  they  have 
now.  Anybody  who  ever  candidly  studied  them  and 
accepted  them  for  no  more  than  they  were  really  worth 
can  stand  by  them  now  as  well  as  ever.  The  time  when 
a  maxim  or  principle  is  worth  something  is  when  you 
are  tempted  to  violate  it.  ' 

Another  answer  which  the  imperialists  make  is  that 
Americans  can  do  anything.  They  say  that  they  do 
not  shrink  from  responsibilities.  They  are  willing  to 
run  into  a  hole,  trusting  to  luck  and  cleverness  to  get 
out.  There  are  some  things  that  Americans  cannot  do. 
Americans  cannot  make  2  +  2  =  5.  You  may  answer 
that  that  is  an  arithmetical  impossibility  and  is  not  in 
the  range  of  our  subject.  Very  well;  Americans  cannot 
collect  two  dollars  a  gallon  tax  on  whisky.  They  tried 
it  for  many  years  and  failed.  That  is  an  economic  or 
political  impossibility,  the  roots  of  which  are  in  human 
nature.  It  is  as  absolute  an  impossibility  on  this  domain 
as  the  former  on  the  domain  of  mathematics.  So  far  as 
yet  appears,  Americans  cannot  govern  a  city  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  inhabitants  so  as  to  get  comfort  and  con- 
venience in  it  at  a  low  cost  and  without  jobbery.  The 
fire  department  of  this  city  is  now  demoralized  by  polit- 


330     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

ical  jobbery  —  and  Spain  and  all  her  possessions  are  not 
worth  as  much  to  you  and  me  as  the  efficiency  of  the 
fire  department  of  New  Haven.  The  Americans  in  Con- 
necticut cannot  abolish  the  rotten  borough  system.  The 
English  abolished  their  rotten  borough  system  seventy 
years  ago,  in  spite  of  nobles  and  landlords.  We  cannot 
abolish  ours  in  spite  of  the  small  towns.  Americans 
cannot  reform  the  pension  list.  Its  abuses  are  rooted  in 
the  methods  of  democratic  self-government,  and  no  one 
dares  to  touch  them.  It  is  very  doubtful  indeed  if  Amer- 
icans can  keep  up  an  army  of  one  hundred  thousand  men 
in  time  of  peace.  Where  can  one  hundred  thousand 
men  be  found  in  this  country  who  are  willing  to  spend 
their  lives  as  soldiers;  or  if  they  are  found,  what  pay  will 
it  require  to  induce  them  to  take  this  career.^  Americans 
cannot  disentangle  their  currency  from  the  confusion  into 
which  it  was  thrown  by  the  Civil  War,  and  they  can- 
not put  it  on  a  simple,  sure,  and  sound  basis  which 
would  give  stability  to  the  business  of  the  country.  This 
is  a  political  impossibility.  ^Americans  cannot  assure 
the  suffrage  to  negroes  throughout  the  United  States; 
they  have  tried  it  for  thirty  years  and  now,  contem- 
poraneously with  this  war  with  Spain,  it  has  been  finally 
demonstrated  that  it  is  a  failure.  Inasmuch  as  the  negro 
is  now  out  of  fashion,  no  further  attempt  to  accomplish 
this  purpose  will  be  made.  It  is  an  impossibility  on 
account  of  the  complexity  of  our  system  of  State  and 
Federal  government.  If  I  had  time  to  do  so,  I  could  go 
back  over  the  history  of  negro  suffrage  and  show  you 
how  curbstone  arguments,  exactly  analogous  to  the  argu- 
ments about  expansion,  were  used  to  favor  it,  and  how 
objections  were  thrust  aside  in  this  same  blustering  and 
senseless  manner  in  which  objections  to  imperialism  are 
met.     The  ballot,  we  were  told,  was  an  educator  and 


CONQUEST  OF  THE  U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         331 

would  solve  all  difficulties  in  its  own  path  as  by  magic. 
Worse  still,  Americans  cannot  assure  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness  to  negroes  inside  of  the  United 
States.  When  the  negro  postmaster's  house  was  set  on 
fire  in  the  night  in  South  Carolina,  and  not  only  he,  but 
his  wife  and  children,  were  murdered  as  they  came  out, 
and  when,  moreover,  this  incident  passed  without  legal 
investigation  or  punishment,  it  was  a  bad  omen  for  the 
extension  of  liberty,  etc.,  to  Malays  and  Tagals  by  simply 
setting  over  them  the  American  flag.  Upon  a  little 
serious  examination  the  off-hand  disposal  of  an  impor- 
tant question  of  policy  by  the  declaration  that  Americans 
can  do  anything  proves  to  be  only  a  silly  piece  of  bom- 
bast, and  upon  a  little  reflection  we  find  that  our  hands 
are  quite  full  at  home  of  problems  by  the  solution  of 
which  the  peace  and  happiness  of  the  American  people 
could  be  greatly  increased.  The  laws  of  nature  and  of 
human  nature  are  just  as  valid  for  Americans  as  for 
anybody  else,  and  if  we  commit  acts  we  shall  have  \o 
take  consequences,  just  like  other  people.  Therefore 
prudence  demands  that  we  look  ahead  to  see  what  we 
are  about  to  do,  and  that  we  gauge  the  means  at  our 
disposal,  if  we  do  not  want  to  bring  calamity  on  ourselves 
and  our  children.  We  see  that  the  peculiarities  of  our 
system  of  government  set  limitations  on  us.  We  cannot 
do  things  which  a  great  centralized  monarchy  could  do. 
The  very  blessings  and  special  advantages  which  we 
enjoy,  as  compared  with  others,  bring  disabilities  with 
them.  That  is  the  great  fundamental  cause  of  what  I 
have  tried  to  show  throughout  this  lecture,  that  we 
cannot  govern  dependencies  consistently  with  our  polit- 
ical system,  and  that,  if  we  try  it,  the  State  which  our 
fathers  founded  will  suffer  a  reaction  which  will  trans- 
form it  into  another  empire  just  after  the  fashion  of  all 


332     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  old  ones.  That  is  what  imperialism  means.  That 
is  what  it  will  be;  and  the  democratic  republic,  which 
has  been,  will  stand  in  history,  like  the  colonial  organiza- 
tion of  earlier  days,  as  a  mere  transition  form. 

And  yet  this  scheme  of  a  republic  which  our  fathers 
formed  was  a  glorious  dream  which  demands  more  than 
a  word  of  respect  and  affection  before  it  passes  away. 
Indeed,  it  is  not  fair  to  call  it  a  dream  or  even  an  ideal; 
it  was  a  possibility  which  was  within  our  reach  if  we  had 
been  wise  enough  to  grasp  and  hold  it.  It  was  favored 
by  our  comparative  isolation,  or,  at  least,  by  our  dis- 
tance from  other  strong  states.  The  men  who  came 
here  were  able  to  throw  off  all  the  trammels  of  tradition 
and  established  doctrine.  They  went  out  into  a  wilder- 
ness, it  is  true,  but  they  took  with  them  all  the  art,  science, 
and  literature  which,  up  to  that  time,  civilization  had  pro- 
duced. They  could  not,  it  is  true,  strip  their  minds  of 
the  ideas  which  they  had  inherited,  but  in  time,  as  they 
lived  on  in  the  new  world,  they  sifted  and  selected  these 
ideas,  retaining  what  they  chose.  Of  the  old-world  insti- 
tutions also  they  selected  and  adopted  what  they  chose 
and  threw  aside  the  rest.  It  was  a  grand  opportunity 
to  be  thus  able  to  strip  off  all  the  follies  and  errors  which 
they  had  inherited,  so  far  as  they  chose  to  do  so.  They 
had  unlimited  land  with  no  feudal  restrictions  to  hinder 
them  in  the  use  of  it.  Their  idea  was  that  they  would 
never  allow  any  of  the  social  and  political  abuses  of  the 
old  world  to  grow  up  here.  There  should  be  no  manors, 
no  barons,  no  ranks,  no  prelates,  no  idle  classes,  no 
paupers,  no  disinherited  ones  except  the  vicious.  There 
were  to  be  no  armies  except  a  militia,  which  would  have 
no  functions  but  those  of  police.  They  would  have  no 
court  and  no  pomp;  no  orders,  or  ribbons,  or  decora- 
tions, or  titles.     They  would  have  no  public  debt.     They 


CONQUEST  OF  THE   U.   S.   BY  SPAIN         333 

repudiated  with  scorn  the  notion  that  a  pubhc  debt  is  a 
public  blessing;  if  debt  was  incurred  in  war  it  was  to 
be  paid  in  peace  and  not  entailed  on  posterity.  There 
was  to  be  no  grand  diplomacy,  because  they  intended  to 
mind  their  own  business  and  not  be  involved  in  any  of 
the  intrigues  to  which  European  statesmen  were  accus- 
tomed. There  was  to  be  no  balance  of  power  and  no 
"reason  of  state"  to  cost  the  life  and  happiness  of  citi- 
zens. The  only  part  of  the  Monroe  doctrine  which  is 
valid  was  their  determination  that  the  social  and  political 
systems  of  Europe  should  not  be  extended  over  any  part 
of  the  American  continent,  lest  people  who  were  weaker 
than  we  should  lose  the  opportunity  which  the  new  con- 
tinent gave  them  to  escape  from  those  systems  if  they 
wanted  to.  Our  fathers  would  have  an  economical 
government,  even  if  grand  people  called  it  a  parsimonious 
one,  and  taxes  should  be  no  greater  than  were  absolutely 
necessary  to  pay  for  such  a  government.  The  citizen 
was  to  keep  all  the  rest  of  his  earnings  and  use  them  as 
he  thought  best  for  the  happiness  of  himself  and  his 
family;  he  was,  above  all,  to  be  insured  peace  and 
quiet  while  he  pursued  his  honest  industry  and  obeyed 
the  laws.  No  adventurous  policies  of  conquest  or  am- 
bition, such  as,  in  the  belief  of  our  fathers,  kings  and 
nobles  had  forced,  for  their  own  advantage,  on  European 
states,  would  ever  be  undertaken  by  a  free  democratic 
republic.  Therefore  the  citizen  here  would  never  be  forced 
to  leave  his  family  or  to  give  his  sons  to  shed  blood  for 
glory  and  to  leave  widows  and  orphans  in  misery  for 
nothing.  Justice  and  law  were  to  reign  in  the  midst  of 
simplicity,  and  a  government  which  had  little  to  do  was 
to  offer  little  field  for  ambition.  In  a  society  where 
industry,  frugality,  and  prudence  were  honored,  it  was 
believed  that  the  vices  of  wealth  would  never  flourish. 


334     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

We  know  that  these  beHefs,  hopes,  and  intentions  have 
been  only  partially  fulfilled.  We  know  that,  as  time  has 
gone  on  and  we  have  grown  numerous  and  rich,  some  of 
these  things  have  proved  impossible  ideals,  incompatible 
with  a  large  and  flourishing  society,  but  it  is  by  virtue 
of  this  conception  of  a  commonwealth  that  the  United 
States  has  stood  for  something  unique  and  grand  in  the 
history  of  mankind  and  that  its  people  have  been  happy. 
It  is  by  virtue  of  these  ideals  that  w^e  have  been  *' iso- 
lated," isolated  in  a  position  which  the  other  nations  of 
the  earth  have  observed  in  silent  envy;  and  yet  there  are 
people  who  are  boasting  of  their  patriotism,  because  they 
say  that  we  have  taken  our  place  now  amongst  the  nations 
of  the  earth  by  virtue  of  this  war.  My  patriotism  is  of 
the  kind  which  is  outraged  by  the  notion  that  the  United 
States  never  was  a  great  nation  until  in  a  petty  three 
months'  campaign  it  knocked  to  pieces  a  poor,  decrepit, 
bankrupt  old  state  like  Spain.  To  hold  such  an  opinion 
as  that  is  to  abandon  all  American  standards,  to  put 
shame  and  scorn  on  all  that  our  ancestors  tried  to  build 
up  here,  and  to  go  over  to  the  standards  of  which  Spain 
is  a  representative. 


THE  PREDOMINANT  ISSUE 


XVI 

THE  PREDOMINANT  ISSUE 

[ 1900  ] 

T7^  ACH  of  the  two  great  parties  in  the  present  campaign 
-■--^  is  trying  to  force  on  the  other  a  "predominant 
issue"  to  which  the  other  will  not  agree.  The  predomi- 
nant issue,  not  for  a  campaign  or  a  year,  is  expansion 
and  all  that  goes  with  it.  It  will  not  be  settled  by  speeches 
or  votes.  It  will  have  to  work  itself  out  in  history. 
The  political  history  of  the  United  States  for  the  next 
fifty  years  will  date  from  the  Spanish  war  of  1898.  The 
attempt  to  absorb  into  the  body  politic  of  the  United 
States  communities  of  entirely  foreign  antecedents, 
nationality,  religion,  language,  mores,  political  education, 
institutions  —  in  short,  of  a  different  culture  and  social 
education  from  ours  —  must  be  regarded  as  a  far  more 
serious  venture  than  it  is  now  popularly  supposed  to  be. 
Out  of  it  will  arise  one  question  after  another,  and  they 
will  be  of  a  kind  to  produce  political  convulsions  amongst 
us.  The  predominant  issue,  in  a  far  wider  sense  than 
the  wranglings  of  a  presidential  campaign,  is  how  to  let 
go  of  what  we  seized.  No  discussion  such  as  occurs  in 
a  campaign  ever  clears  up  an  issue;  for  one  reason,  be- 
cause the  discussion  is  carried  on,  not  to  get  at  the  truth 
or  wisdom  of  the  case,  but  to  win  a  party  victory.  It  is 
an  interesting  study  to  notice  how  such  a  discussion 
results  in  set  phrases  and  stereotyped  assertions  which 
bar  the  way  to  any  real  understanding  of  the  issue. 
Let  it  be  our  object  now  to  try  to  define  the  issue  under 
expansion,    imperialism,    and    militarism,    which    stands 

[3371 


338     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

before  the  American  people  as  the  chief  poHtical  interest 
of  the  immediate  future. 

There  are  few  of  us  who  have  not  heard  it  said,  after 
the  failure  of  a  mercantile  or  manufacturing  firm,  that 
the  cause  of  failure  was  that  they  had  "spread  out  too 
much."  The  story  is  generally  one  of  success  within  a 
field  of  effort,  then  of  enthusiasm  and  ambition  over- 
mastering prudence  and  moderation,  then  of  excessive 
burdens  and  failure.  On  the  other  hand,  we  are  familiar 
enough  with  cases  in  which  business  enterprise  and 
courage  sustain  enormous  growth  and  expansion.  It 
appears,  therefore,  that  expansion,  as  such,  is  neither 
good  nor  bad.  The  question  is  one  of  conditions,  cir- 
cumstances, powers.  It  is  a  question  of  policy  which 
must  be  decided  by  wisdom  and  prudence.  It  follows 
that  it  is  never  a  question  which  can  be  settled  by  prece- 
dent. Every  new  case  of  expansion  has  its  own  cir- 
cumstances. Enthusiasm  would  have  no  place  in  the 
plan  if  it  was  to  win  the  confidence  of  bankers  and  in- 
vestors. Impatience  of  prudent  foresight,  and  irritation 
at  demands  to  see  the  grounds  for  expecting  success, 
would  not  recommend  the  project  to  wise  business  men. 
Mere  megalomania  —  a  desire  to  get  a  big  thing  to  brag 
about  —  would  not  be  regarded  as  a  good  basis  for  the 
enterprise. 

At  least  two  of  our  large  cities  have  recently  expanded 
their  boundaries.  A  leading  newspaper  of  Chicago  has 
explained  the  financial  distress  of  that  city  by  the  extent 
to  which  it  has  included  unimproved  suburbs.^  The 
people  of  greater  New  York  seem  to  have  many  doubts 
whether   their   expansion   was   wise   and   prudent. ^     No 

^  Chicago  Tribune  in  the  New  York  Times,  September  4,  1900. 
^  Comptroller's  statements  and  newspaper  comments   thereon  about  Sep- 
tember 22,  1900. 


THE   PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  339 

doubt  both  cities  were  chiefly  influenced  by  megalomania, 
although  it  may  very  probably  appear,  after  twenty- 
five  years,  in  the  case  of  New  York,  that  it  was  well  to 
secure  the  consolidation  before  greater  difficulties  accumu- 
lated in  the  way  of  it,  and  that  the  ultimate  interest  of 
all  concerned  was  really  served  by  it. 

If  it  is  proposed  to  a  railroad  company  to  buy  or  lease 
another  line,  shall  they  not  look  to  see  whether  it  will 
be  a  burden  or  an  advantage?  To  buy  a  lawsuit  is  not 
always  an  act  of  folly.  John  Jacob  Astor  did  it  with 
great  profit,  but  he  took  care  to  get  the  best  information 
and  legal  advice  which  could  be  obtained  before  he  did  it. 

Expansion,  therefore,  is  not  a  disease,  of  which  it  can 
be  said  that  it  is  always  a  calamity;  nor  is  it  a  growth 
of  which  it  can  be  said  that  it  is  always  an  advantage. 
How  can  it  be  doubted  that  territorial  expansion  for  a 
state  presents  the  same  kind  of  a  problem,  with  similar 
danger  of  delusions,  fallacies,  and  pitfalls  of  vanity? 
Expansion  may  lower  national  vitality  and  hasten 
decay. 

Any  state  or  nation  has  life  necessities  to  meet  as  time 
goes  on.  It  was  a  life  necessity  of  the  German  nation 
fifty  years  ago  to  form  a  unified  state,  and  the  same  was 
true  of  Italy.  The  cost  was  great,  but  it  had  to  be  met. 
The  alternative  was  stagnation  and  decay.  The  Russians 
say  that  it  is  a  life  necessity  for  them  to  get  better  access 
to  the  sea,  but  the  case  is  by  no  means  so  clear.  Probably 
the  real  philosophy  of  the  American  Revolution  is  that 
it  was  a  life  necessity  of  the  Anglo-American  colonies  to 
become  independent.  It  matters  little,  therefore,  that 
the  alleged  reasons  for  the  revolt,  in  history,  law,  and 
political  philosophy,  will  not  bear  examination. 

This  doctrine  of  life  necessity  is  dangerous.  Unless 
it  be  handled  with  great  caution  and  conscientiousness 


340     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

and  be  checked  by  a  close  and  positive  adherence  to 
facts,  it  may  easily  degenerate  into  the  old  "reason  of 
state"  and  furnish  an  excuse  for  any  political  crime. 
It  is  a  grand  thing  to  soar  over  epochs  and  periods  of 
history,  deducing  political  generalizations  and  sweeping 
"laws  of  history,"  but  it  is  futile  and  to  be  condemned 
unless  it  is  done  upon  a  basis  of  mature  scholarship  and 
with  great  reserve  and  care.  Such  deductions  deserve 
no  attention  unless  they  are  restricted  to  simple  phe- 
nomena and  are  above  all  suspicion  of  party  interest. 

The  acquisition  of  Louisiana  by  the  United  States 
was  a  clear  and  simple  case  of  life  necessity.  If  Spain 
claimed  that,  as  possessor  of  New  Orleans,  she  might  of 
right  close  the  Mississippi  River,  it  was  a  life  necessity 
of  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  take  New  Orleans 
from  her  by  purchase  or  war.  Her  views  of  public  law 
and  international  rights  and  colonies  then  brought  her 
into  collision  with  us.  The  purchase  of  the  w^hole  western 
half  of  the  valley  was  never  contemplated  by  anybody 
here;  it  was  proposed  by  France.  If  the  purchase  was 
wise,  it  was  because  the  city  could  not  be  obtained  other- 
wise, and  we  have  a  case  which  establishes  the  doctrine 
of  "meeting  the  consequences"  at  the  same  time  that  it 
limits  and  defines  it.  The  arguments  of  the  Federalists 
against  the  purchase  were  all  good,  so  far  as  they  wxre 
not  partisan,  at  that  time,  but  the  railroad  and  the 
telegraph  took  away  all  their  force  afterwards.  Neither 
party  could  foresee  the  railroads  or  telegraphs.  The 
purchase  of  Louisiana  entailed  the  question  of  extending 
slavery,  but  the  statesmen  of  1803,  doing  what  our 
interests  then  required,  could  properly  leave  the  conse- 
quences to  be  met  when  they  arose,  and  they  are  not  to 
be  blamed  if  those  consequences  were  unwisely  met  when 
they  came. 


THE   PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  341 

The  acquisition  of  Florida  was  not  in  obedience  to  a 
State  necessity  so  clear  and  great  as  the  acquisition  of 
New  Orleans,  but  Florida  was  geographically  a  part 
of  our  territory  and  Spain  discharged  her  international 
duties  with  respect  to  it  in  such  manner  that  our  rela- 
tions with  her  were  always  bad.  There  was  a  great 
interest  to  acquire  Florida,  if  it  could  be  done  by  peaceful 
purchase. 

The  acquisition  of  Texas  and  California  was  a  very 
different  matter.  The  two  cases  are  generally  conjoined, 
but  they  were  very  different  and  the  whole  story  is  one 
of  those  which  a  nation  ignores  in  its  own  annals  while 
vigorously  denouncing  similar  episodes  in  the  history 
of  other  states.  The  current  argument  now  to  justify 
what  was  done  then  is  to  point  to  Texas  and  the  other 
states,  to  the  harbor  of  San  Francisco,  the  gold-mines, 
and  the  Pacific  Railroad,  and  to  say  that  we  should  have 
had  none  of  these  but  for  what  was  done  in  1848.  This 
is  as  if  a  man  who  had  stolen  a  fortune  fifty  years  ago 
should  justify  himself  by  saying  that  he  would  not  other- 
wise have  had  the  land,  houses,  ships,  and  stocks,  which 
he  has  had  and  enjoyed.  Public  and  private  property 
are  not  to  be  put  on  the  same  plane,  and  this  comparison 
is  good  only  for  the  particular  point  for  which  it  is  adduced; 
namely,  that  the  pleasure  and  profit  obtained  from  spoli- 
ation never  can  justify  it.  Nevertheless,  there  is  some 
force  in  the  doctrine  of  "manifest  destiny."  Manifest 
destiny  is  far  more  sound  than  the  empty  and  silly  talk 
of  the  last  two  years  about  "Destiny."  Manifest  destiny 
includes  a  rational  judgment  about  the  relations  which 
now  exist  compared  with  those  which  will  probably 
arise  in  the  future,  but  "Destiny"  has  nothing  rational 
in  it.  To  invoke  it  in  public  affairs  is  a  refusal  to  think 
or  to  be  governed  by  reason.     Destiny  is  a  name  for  the 


342     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

connection  which  unites  the  series  of  consequences  upon 
an  act  Hke  the  war  with  Spain,  and  it  is  invoked  to 
prevent  us  from  going  back  to  see  whether  the  con- 
sequences do  not  prove  that  that  act  was  wrong  and 
foohsh. 

There  was  room  to  argue,  in  1845,  that  it  was  the  plain 
course  of  the  future  that  the  United  States  should  occupy 
and  develop  California:  it  was  a  contiguous  territory; 
it  lay  between  the  United  States  and  the  Pacific  and  con- 
tained the  best  harbor  on  the  coast;  it  was  in  hands 
which  were  not  developing  it;  it  was  almost  uninhabited, 
so  that  the  subjugation  of  dissatisfied  people,  although 
not  entirely  absent,  was  not  an  important  feature.  The 
claim  of  a  group  of  people  to  hold  a  part  of  the  earth's 
surface  is  never  absolute.  Every  group  holds  its  terri- 
tory by  force  and  holds  it  subject  to  the  obligation  to 
exploit  it  and  make  it  contributory  to  the  welfare  of 
mankind.  If  it  does  not  do  this  it  will  probably  lose 
the  territory  by  the  conquest  of  a  more  energetic  people. 
This  is  manifest  destiny.  It  is  another  dangerous  doc- 
trine, if  it  is  used  without  a  candid  heed  to  its  limitations. 
It  has  been  abused  twice  recently:  first,  an  absolute 
right  to  territory  has  been  set  up  on  behalf  of  the  Boers, 
who  really  challenged  the  English  as  to  the  manifest 
destiny  of  South  Africa;  second,  in  our  own  relations 
with  Spain  we  have  heard  arguments  that,  if  one  state 
thinks  that  another  is  not  making  good  use  of  its  terri- 
tory, the  former  may  dispossess  the  latter.  In  so  far, 
then,  as  state  necessity  in  the  weaker  form  of  manifest 
destiny  may  be  judged  to  apply  to  California,  that  case 
of  expansion  could  be  justified. 

If  now  we  turn  to  our  recent  expansion  and  apply 
the  doctrine  of  state  necessity  to  it,  there  might  be  some 
argument  in  favor   of  the   acquisition   of   Cuba.     It  is 


THE   PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  343 

contiguous  to  our  territory  and  there  is  a  slight  but  unim- 
portant mihtary  advantage  in  owning  it.  No  necessity 
for  owning  it  was  ever  experienced;  that  is  to  say,  no 
conviction  that  we  needed  it  was  ever  forced  upon  us 
by  experience  of  loss,  disadvantage,  injury,  or  incapacity 
of  any  kind,  from  not  possessing  it,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Mississippi  River.  The  American  people  were  indifferent 
to  it  up  to  1898.  We  had  no  grievance  against  Spain. 
No  folly  or  wrong  which  she  had  committed  had  reached 
us,  as  in  the  case  of  Florida.  Yet  it  was  with  reference 
to  Cuba  that  we  went  to  war  with  her,  and  we  have 
bound  ourselves  to  make  Cuba  independent;  that  is,  to 
put  her  out  of  our  jurisdiction  and  sacrifice  any  inter- 
est which  we  have  in  possessing  the  island.  It  is  as  safe 
as  any  political  prediction  can  be  that  we  shall  never 
again  give  up  the  jurisdiction  over  Cuba.  Our  national 
vanity  is  at  stake  in  it  now,  and  there  is  some  rational 
ground  for  holding  it. 

As  to  Puerto  Rico  and  the  Philippines  the  great  ground 
for  dissent  from  what  has  been  done  is  that  action  did 
not  proceed  from  any  rational  motive  connected  with 
the  growth  and  ramifications  of  the  interests  of  the 
American  people.  The  action  was  gratuitous  and  adven- 
turous. While  it  was  not  called  for  by  any  care  for  our 
interests  it  involved  us  in  risks  and  obligations.  A  new 
doctrine  of  constructive  obligation  has  been  invented 
which  is  false  and  dangerous.  A  prominent  newspaper 
recently  argued  that  we  are  bound  to  protect  the  Chinese 
Christian  converts  because  we  allowed  missionaries  to 
be  sent  to  China  under  our  protection.  This  is  but  a 
specimen  of  the  way  in  which  false  dogmas  grow  when 
statesmen  begin  to  act  from  motives  which  are  entirely 
foreign  to  statecraft.  The  arguments  in  favor  of  expan- 
sion all  have  the  character  of  after-thoughts  invented 


344     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

to  excuse  or  defend  acts  which  were  resolved  upon  for 
other  reasons.  At  the  present  moment  perhaps  not  a 
single  voter  wants  the  United  States  to  acquire  a  part  of 
China.  ^Vhy  not.^^  If  anyone  was  asked,  he  probably 
would  say  that  it  is  out  of  our  way,  that  it  would  involve 
us  in  trouble,  that  it  is  not  necessary  for  our  interests, 
that  it  would  be  foolish,  since  it  w^ould  show  a  lack  of 
judgment  as  to  when  a  thing  is  w4se  and  when  it  is  not. 
If  any  voter  had  been  asked  on  January  1,  1898,  whether 
he  desired  that  the  United  States  should  acquire  the 
Philippine  Islands,  would  he  not  have  made  the  same 
reply,  with  impatient  scorn  that  anyone  should  bother 
him  with  such  a  senseless  proposition?  Hov»'  did  the 
battle  of  Manila  Bay  alter  any  factor  which  entered 
into  the  wisdom  of  acquiring  the  Philippines  as  a  ques- 
tion of  rational  statesmanship?  If  that  battle  had  never 
taken  place,  and  the  Philippine  islanders  had  continued 
their  revolution  until  they  drove  out  the  Spaniards, 
what  would  Americans  have  cared  what  government  they 
set  up  or  how  they  got  along  with  it?  WTiy  should  we 
care  now,  even  if  a  naval  battle  between  us  and  the 
Spaniards  did  take  place  in  Manila  Bay?  No  one  is  so 
foolish  as  really  to  believe  in  these  constructive  obliga- 
tions, if  there  were  no  other  elements  in  the  case,  but  the 
national  vanity  is  now  enlisted,  and  vanity  leads  nations 
into  folly  just  as  it  does  individuals. 

Upon  a  positive  analysis,  therefore,  the  case  of  recent 
expansion  is  shown  to  be  different  from  all  the  earlier 
cases  which  are  cited  to  justify  it  precisely  in  the  most 
essential  fact,  the  interest  of  the  American  people  as  the 
efficient  motive. 

All  expansion  includes  the  question  whether  we  shall 
treat  the  inhabitants  of  new  possessions  as  we  treat  each 
other,   or   on   some   inferior   footing;    whether   we   shall 


THE  PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  345 

govern  them  by  our  will  or  let  them  share  in  governing 
themselves  and  us.  This  dilemma  is  insoluble  under 
our  system  of  government.  We  shall  struggle  with  it 
through  the  next  generation,  and  it  will  force  a  change 
in  our  system  of  government.  This  is  why  the  present 
expansion,  taking  in  elements  which  are  foreign  and 
uncongenial,  is  no  parallel  to  cases  of  expansion  into 
uninhabited  territory.  The  inhabitants  of  the  new  pos- 
sessions have  interests,  ideas,  tastes,  wills,  and  unless  we 
kill  them  all,  their  human  traits  will  enter  into  the  prob- 
lem. If  we  take  them  into  full  fellowship,  imagine  what 
the  "Spanish  Gang"  will  be  and  do  in  Congress  within 
twenty  years!  It  would  be  madness  to  put  our  interests 
into  such  jeopardy,  and  it  would  be  fatal  to  the  political 
system  under  which  we  have  lived  to  take  that  course. 
The  other  branch  of  the  dilemma  is  imperialism  and  it 
is  no  less  fatal  to  our  political  system. 

Specifically,  it  is  imperialism  for  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  to  rule  any  people  who  are  outside  of 
the  United  States  and  not  under  the  guarantees  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Congress  owes  its 
existence  to  the  Constitution,  which  defines  the  rights 
and  duties  of  Congress.  Congress  has  no  existence  or 
authority  outside  of  the  sway  and  the  restrictions  of  the 
political  system  to  which  that  document  gives  order, 
nor  outside  of  the  commonwealth  of  which  that  docu- 
ment prescribes  the  structure  and  functions.  The  answer 
which  is  made  to  this  statement  is  that  the  United  States 
is  a  sovereign  state,  like  any  other  state,  and  with  all 
the  powers  which  any  state  of  the  first  rank  has.  That 
is  imperialism,  for  it  disregards  the  historical  and  legal 
facts  about  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  and 
the  novel  and  unique  political  system  created  under  it, 
in  order  to  go  off  and  find  a  basis  of  interpretation  for 


346     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

the  American  Federal  Commonwealth  in  the  precedents 
and  analogies  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  modern 
European  military  monarchies.  Here  is  an  issue  which 
is  sharp  enough.  Here  is  something  which  may  properly 
be  called  "Americanism";  namely,  the  novel  and  unique 
political  system  under  which  we  have  lived  and  loyalty 
to  the  same,  and  the  issue  is  nothing  less  than  whether 
to  go  on  and  maintain  it  or  to  discard  it  for  the  European 
military  and  monarchical  tradition.  It  must  be  a  com- 
plete transformation  of  the  former  to  try  to  carry  on 
under  it  two  groups  of  political  societies,  one  on  a  higher, 
the  other  on  a  lower  plane,  unequal  in  rights  and  powers; 
the  former,  in  their  confederated  capacity,  ruling  the 
latter  perhaps  by  military  force. 

Then  again,  imperialism  is  a  philosophy.  It  is  the 
way  of  looking  at  things  which  is  congenial  to  people  who 
are  ruling  others  without  constitutional  restraints,  and  it 
is  the  temper  in  which  they  act.  History  offers  plenty 
of  examples  of  it  and  the  most  striking  ones  are  furnished 
by  democracies  and  republics.  The  Greek  cities  with 
their  colonies  and  dependent  allies,  the  Roman  republic, 
the  Italian  city  republics,  showed  what  tyranny  one 
commonwealth  is  capable  of  when  it  rules  another.  We 
showed  it  ourselves  in  the  reconstruction  period.  You 
cannot  get  a  governing  state  to  listen,  think,  repent, 
confess,  and  reform.  It  is  more  vain  than  a  despot. 
Is  it  not  a  "free"  government.^^  Can  "we"  be  tyrants 
or  do  any  wrong?  Already  we  have  had  ample  manifes- 
tations of  this  temper  amongst  ourselves.  We  have 
juggled  away  so  much  of  our  sacred  political  dogmas  as 
troubles  us,  although  we  cling  to  such  as  we  can  still 
make  use  of.  We  fret  and  chafe  now  at  the  "Constitu- 
tion," of  which,  two  years  ago,  we  made  a  fetish.  W^e 
fly  into  a  rage  at  anybody  who  dissents  and  call  him 


THE  PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  347 

"rebel"  and  "traitor,"  as  strikers  shout  "scab"  at  any- 
one who  chooses  to  hold  an  opinion  of  his  own.  It  is 
one  of  the  worst  symptoms  of  change  that  the  American 
sense  of  humor,  which  has,  in  the  past,  done  such  good 
service  in  suppressing  political  asininity,  now  makes 
default.  If  it  was  still  efficient  we  should  not  hear  of 
"traitors"  who  choose  to  vote  no,  or  of  "rebels"  who 
never  owed  allegiance,  or  of  the  doctrine  that  those  who 
oppose  a  war  are  responsible  for  the  lives  lost  in  it,  or 
that  a  citizen  may  criticise  any  action  of  his  government 
except  a  war.  The  evil  of  imperialism  is  in  its 
reaction  on  our  own  national  character  and  institutions, 
on  our  political  ideas  and  creed,  on  our  way  of  man- 
aging our  public  affairs,  on  our  temper  in  political 
discussion. 

Imperialism  is  one  way  of  dealing  with  the  problem 
forced  upon  us  by  expansion  to  embrace  uncongenial' 
groups  of  people.  Militarism  is  a  method  of  carrying 
out  that  policy.  The  President  will  not  wear  a  crown, 
and  Congress  will  not  introduce  universal  military  ser- 
vice next  winter.  Derision  of  such  fears  is  cheap,  since 
nobody  entertains  them.  In  this  world  it  is  the  little 
beginnings  which  tell;  it  is  the  first  steps  at  the  parting 
of  the  ways  which  are  decisive.  Militarism  is  a  system. 
It  may  go  with  a  small  armament,  or  be  absent  with 
a  large  one,  as  in  England.  It  is  militarism  when  a 
European  king  always  wears  a  military  uniform.  It 
represents  an  idea.  The  predominant  idea  in  the  State 
is,  perhaps  necessarily,  its  military  strength,  and  the 
king,  as  the  representative  of  the  State,  keeps  this  ever 
before  himself  and  others.  This  is  a  way  of  looking  at 
State  affairs,  and  it  colors  everything  else.  Therefore  it 
is  militarism  when  military  officers  despise  civilians  and 
call  them   "pekins,"   lawyers,   grocers,   philistines,   etc.; 


348     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

when  they  never  go  about  without  sabres  by  their  sides; 
when  they  push  civiHans  off  the  sidewalk  and  cut  their 
heads  open  with  the  sabre  if  they  remonstrate.  It  is 
mihtarism  when  railroads  are  built  as  military  strategy 
requires,  not  as  trade  requires.  IVIilitarism  and  indus- 
trialism are  two  standpoints  which  are  widely  separated, 
from  which  the  modern  State  has  two  very  different 
aspects,  and  from  which  almost  every  question  of  policy 
will  have  two  different  presumptions  to  start  with. 
Under  militarism  the  foremost  question  is :  Will  it  increase 
our  power  to  fight .^  Under  industrialism  it  is:  Will  it 
increase  the  comfort  of  our  people.^  Of  every  new  inven- 
tion militarism  asks:  How  can  it  be  rendered  useful 
for  military  purposes.^  Industrialism  asks:  How  will  it 
increase  our  power  over  nature  to  supply  our  needs  .^ 
Militarism  is  also  a  philosophy  and  temper  which  is 
accordant  with  imperialism.  It  consists  in  aggression 
and  domination  instead  of  conciliation  and  concession. 
It  is  militarism  to  "jam  things  through"  without  con- 
sideration for  the  feelings  and  interests  of  other  people, 
except  so  far  as  they  can  strike  back,  whether  it  is  done 
in  a  legislature  or  on  the  field  of  battle.  Militarism  is 
pugnacity,  preference  for  fighting  methods,  faith  in  vio- 
lence, strenuosity,  ruthlessness,  cynical  selfishness  as  far 
as  one  dare  indulge  it.  It  is  entirely  opposed  to  the 
American  temper  which  has  been  developed  by  industri- 
alism and  which  does  not  believe  in  fighting  methods, 
although  it  recognizes  the  fact  that  men  must  fight 
sometimes,  and  that  when  the  occasion  comes  they  ought 
to  fight  with  all  their  might.  Militarism  means  one  law 
for  ourselves  and  another  for  everybody  else;  the  great 
dogmas  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  were  good 
when  we  wanted  to  be  independent  of  somebody  else; 
they  have  no  validity  when  somebody  else  wants  to  be 


THE  PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  349 

independent  of  us.  Aguinaldo  was  a  patriot  when  he 
was  fighting  Spain;  he  is  a  rebel  when  he  is  fighting  us. 
MiHtarism  is  the  neglect  of  rational  motives  and  interests 
and  the  surrender  of  one's  mind  and  will  to  whimsical 
points  of  vanity  and  anger. 

We  have  advanced  far  on  this  road  when  we  propose 
to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  fitness  of  other  people  for  self- 
government.  What  are  the  criteria  of  this  fitness.'* 
Who  knows  whether  we  possess  it  ourselves.^  Any  nation 
possesses  it  only  more  or  less.  The  legislature  of  New 
York  apparently  does  not  think  that  the  city  of  New 
York  possesses  it.  In  the  period  of  1783  to  1789  many 
contemporary  observers  saw  good  reason  to  doubt  whether 
the  United  States  of  North  America  possessed  it,  and 
even  distinguished  fathers  of  the  republic  have  left  on 
record  their  own  misgivings  about  it.  Thirty  years  ago 
we  gave  the  suffrage  to  newly  emancipated  negro  slaves, 
and  gave  them  not  only  self-government,  but  the  political 
control  of  the  States  in  which  they  lived.  It  was  the 
gravest  political  heresy  of  that  period  to  doubt  if  they 
were  "fit  for  self-government,"  and  no  question  of  that 
sort  was  ever  formulated  in  public  discussion.  There  is 
something  ludicrous  in  the  attitude  of  one  community 
standing  over  another  to  see  whether  the  latter  is  "fit 
for  self-government."  Is  lynching,  or  race-rioting,  or 
negro-burning,  or  a  row  in  the  legislature,  or  a  strike  with 
paralyzed  industry,  or  a  disputed  election,  or  a  legislative 
deadlock,  or  the  murder  of  a  claimant-official,  or  counting 
in  unelected  officers,  or  factiousness,  or  financial  corrup- 
tion and  jobbery,  proof  of  unfitness  for  self-government? 
If  so,  any  State  which  was  stronger  than  we  might  take 
away  our  self-government  on  the  ground  that  we  were 
unfit  for  it.  It  is,  therefore,  simply  a  question  of  power, 
like  all  the  other  alleged  grounds  of  interference  of  one 


350     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMXER 

political  body  with  another,  such  as  humanity,  sympathy, 
neighborhood,  internal  anarchy,  and  so  on.  We  talk 
as  if  we  were  going  to  adjudicate  the  fitness  of  another 
body  politic  for  self-government,  as  a  free,  open,  and 
categorical  question,  when  to  decide  it  one  way  means 
that  we  shall  surrender  poiver,  and  when  not  even 
flagrant  civil  war  could  really  be  held  to  prove 
unfitness. 

It  does  not  improve  the  matter  any  to  speak  of  a 
"stable  government."  A  leading  newspaper  recently 
said  that  the  thing  to  do  is  to  establish  "what  may 
properly  be  regarded  by  us  rather  than  Cuba  as  a  stable 
government."  This  is  the  attitude  of  imperialism  and 
militarism,  and  the  issue  involved  between  those  of  us 
who  approve  of  it  and  those  who  do  not  is  whether  the 
American  people  ought,  in  their  own  interest,  to  engage 
in  this  kind  of  an  enterprise  with  respect  to  anybody. 
All  governments  perish.  None,  therefore,  is  stable  be- 
yond more  or  less.  Wliat  degree  of  duration  suffices? 
There  is  no  issue  which  is  capable  of  adjudication. 
There  is,  in  fact,  no  political  issue  between  the  parties 
in  respect  to  their  policy.  Both  use  the  same  phrase. 
Mr.  Bryan  would  be  as  slow  to  wound  the  national 
vanity  as  Mr.  McKinley;  the  patronage  and  power 
in  the  dependencies  are  as  dear  to  his  followers  as  to 
Mr.  McKinley's. 

There  is  an  issue,  however,  and  the  chief  difficulty 
connected  with  it  is  that  it  is  too  deep  and  philosophical 
for  easy  popular  discussion.  It  is  nothing  less  than  the 
standpoint,  the  philosophy,  and  the  temper  of  our  political 
system;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  the  integrity  of  our  politi- 
cal system.  Every  step  we  take  brings  up  new  experi- 
ences which  warn  us  that  we  are  on  a  wTong  path.  The 
irritation  and  impatience  of  the  expansionists  testify  to 


THE   PREDOMINANT  ISSUE  351 

their  own  uneasiness  at  what  we  are  doing.  It  is  not  to 
be  expected  that  any  appeal  to  reason  can  guide  the  course 
of  events.  Experience  of  trouble,  war,  expense,  corrup- 
tion, quarrels,  scandals,  etc.,  may  produce  weariness  and 
anger  and  determine  action.  The  issue  will,  therefore, 
press  upon  us  for  years  to  come. 

The  expansionists  ask  what  we  think  ought  to  be  done. 
It  is  they  who  are  in  power  and  have  our  fate  in  their 
hands,  and  it  belongs  to  them  to  say  what  shall  be  done. 
This  they  have  not  done.  They  are  contented  with 
optimistic  platitudes  which  carry  no  responsibility  and 
can  be  dropped  to-morrow  as  easily  as  "criminal  aggres- 
sion" and  our  "plain  duty."  It  is  unquestionably  true 
that  there  is  no  fighting  against  the  accomplished  fact, 
although  it  is  rare  audacity  to  taunt  the  victims  of  mis- 
government  with  their  own  powerlessness  against  it,  as 
if  that  was  an  excuse  for  it.  We  were  told  that  we  needed 
Hawaii  in  order  to  secure  California.  What  shall  we 
now  take  in  order  to  secure  the  Philippines  .^^  No  wonder 
that  some  expansionists  do  not  want  to  "scuttle  out  of 
China."  We  shall  need  to  take  China,  Japan,  and  the 
East  Indies,  according  to  the  doctrine,  in  order  to  "se- 
cure" what  we  have.  Of  course  this  means  that,  on  the 
doctrine,  we  must  take  the  whole  earth  in  order  to  be 
safe  on  any  part  of  it,  and  the  fallacy  stands  exposed.  If, 
then,  safety  and  prosperity  do  not  lie  in  this  direction, 
the  place  to  look  for  them  is  in  the  other  direction:  in 
domestic  development,  peace,  industry,  free  trade  with 
everybody,  low  taxes,  industrial  power.  We  ought  not 
only  to  grant  independence  to  these  communities,  which 
are  both  geographically  and  socially  outside  of  us,  but 
we  ought  to  force  it  upon  them  as  soon  as  a  reasonable 
time  has  been  granted  to  them  to  organize  such  a  political 
system  as  suits  them.     After   that  they  should  go  on 


352     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

their  own  way  on  their  own  responsibihty,  and  we  should 
turn  our  attention  to  our  own  interests,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  our  own  country,  on  those  lines  of  political 
policy  which  our  traditions  set  for  us  and  of  which  our 
experience  has   been   so  satisfactory. 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY 


XVII 

OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE   COUNTRY 

[  1884  ] 

rr^HERE  is  no  subject  which  is  to-day  so  submerged 
^  in  cant  and  humbug  as  education.  Both  primary 
and  secondary  education  are  suffering  from  this  cause, 
but  in  different  ways.  Primary  education  is  afflicted  by 
the  cant  and  humbug  of  progress  and  innovation,  and 
secondary  education  is  afflicted  by  the  cant  and  hum- 
bug of  conservatism  and  toryism.  The  former  affliction 
is  less  grievous  than  the  latter,  because  it  pertains  to 
life  —  may  proceed  from  an  excess  of  vitality;  the  latter 
pertains  to  death  and  leads  down  to  it. 

It  is  not  my  present  intention  to  discuss  primary 
education,  but  it  belongs  to  my  subject  to  notice  one  fact 
in  the  relation  of  secondary  to  primary  education.  There 
is  a  notion  prevalent  in  college  circles  that  the  colleges 
have  an  important  public  duty  to  perform  in  marking 
out  the  line  of  study  for  the  preparatory  schools,  and  in 
keeping  them  up  to  their  duty.  It  seems  to  me  that  this 
is  a  mischievous  notion.  The  high-schools  and  academies 
of  the  country  are  doing  their  duty  far  better  than  the 
colleges  are  doing  theirs.  The  teachers  in  the  schools 
have  as  high  a  standard  of  duty  as  the  teachers  in  the 
colleges,  and  the  former  have  more  care  and  zeal  to  devise 
and  adopt  good  methods  than  the  latter.  Methods  of 
instruction  are  yet  employed  in  college  which  have  long 
been  discarded  in  the  schools,  and,  if  either  has  anything  to 
learn  from  the  other,  it  is  the  colleges  which  need  instruc- 

[3551 


I 


356     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM   GRAHAM  SUMNER 

tion  from  the  schools.  The  colleges,  by  their  require- 
ments, do  exercise  a  certain  control  over  the  curriculum 
of  the  schools.  It  is  an  open  question  whether  this  control 
is  generally  beneficial  to  the  education  of  the  young  men 
of  the  country.  If  the  colleges  have  prescribed  courses 
of  study,  and  if  the  schools  have  to  follow  a  prescribed 
course  of  study  leading  up  to  it,  then  a  few  gentlemen 
with  strong  prejudices  and  limited  experience  of  life 
obtain  power  to  set  up  a  canon  of  what  things  may  be 
taught  and  learned  in  the  country.  That  such  a  power  has 
been  possessed  and  used,  that  it  still  remains  to  a  great 
extent  unbroken,  and  that  it  is  purely  mischievous,  I 
take  to  be  facts  beyond  contradiction.  In  no  civilized 
country  is  mandarinism  in  education  so  strong  as  in  the 
United  States^  Its  stronghold  is  in  the  colleges,  and  they 
use  such  control  as  they  possess  to  establish  it  in  the 
schools.  One  great  gain  of  the  reform  which  is  now  needed 
in  the  colleges  would  be  that  they  would  confine  themselves 
to  their  own  functions  and  leave  the  academies  and  high- 
schools  to  follow  their  own  legitimate  development. 

I  ought  not  to  speak  as  if  there  had  been  no  improve- 
ment in  American  colleges  within  a  generation.  It  is 
well  knoTvn  that,  both  by  founding  new  institutions  and 
reforming  old  ones,  great  improvements  have  been  made. 
A  great  college  has  a  life  of  its  own.  It  grows  by  its  own 
vital  powers  and  pushes  on  even  the  most  timid  or  reac- 
tionary of  its  personnel.  Probably  bigotry  and  stupidity 
could  kill  it  in  time.  One  knows  of  ancient  seats  of 
learning  which  have  met  that  fate.  But  it  does  not 
come  all  at  once.  Still,  I  believe  that  if  the  question 
whether  the  college  course  had  been  valuable,  had  been 
raised  in  a  class  of  graduates  twenty  or  fifty  years  ago, 
more  would  have  said  that  they  looked  back  upon  it 
as  a  grand  advantage  than  would  say  so  now. 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY     357 

It  is  affirmed,  and  from  such  evidence  as  has  come  to 
my  knowledge  I  beheve  it  to  be  true,  that  the  youth  of 
the  country  do  not  care  for  a  university  education  as 
the  youth  of  former  generations  did.  They  consider  that 
a  high-school  education  is  education  enough.  They  do 
not  look  upon  the  colleges  as  offering  anything  of  high 
and  specific  value  which  it  is  worth  four  years'  time  and 
a  large  expenditure  of  capital  to  get.  Of  course  there 
has  always  been  a  large  class  of  people  who  despised 
a  culture  which  they  never  understood.  The  present 
temper  of  the  youth  and  their  parents  is,  as  I  understand 
it,  a  very  different  thing.  They  look  upon  the  colleges 
as  the  gate  of  admission  to~~a~caste!  of  people  who  are  "^ 
technically ~^educated'"  and  "cultivated,"  who  have  a 
kind  of  free-masonry  of  culture  amongst  themselves, 
but  who  are  not  educated  or  cultivated,  if  we  take  those 
words  in  any  liberal  and  rational  sense,  any  better  than 
large  masses  of  people  who  are  not  college  graduates, 
and  so  not  members  of  the  gild  of  the  learned.  Facts 
are  indisputable  that  free  and  generous  familiarity 
with  the  best  thought  and  knowledge  of  the  time,  as 
well  as  intellectual  power,  activity,  and  elasticity,  are 
displayed  by  men  who  have  never  visited  a  university, 
but  have  devoted  time  judiciously  to  intellectual  pur- 
suits. Therefore  a  notion  has  found  place  that  college 
training  only  confers  artificial  accomplishments  which 
serve  to  mark  the  members  of  the  learned  caste.  Once 
it  was  thought  that  the  only  learning  fit  for  a  gentleman 
was  heraldry,  and  that  his  only  accomplishments  should 
be  those  of  arms,  music,  and  gallantry.  A  flunkey  once 
said  that  a  certain  woman  could  not  be  a  lady :  she  played 
the  piano  so  well  that  she  must  have  been  educated  for 
a  governess.  In  the  old  gilds  a  man  could  only  become 
a  master  by  producing  a  very  costly  and  useless  master- 


V- 


358     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

piece.  A  belle  in  Siam  lets  her  finger-nails  grow  inches 
long,  so  that  she  cannot  even  dress  herself,  and  everyone 
who  sees  her  knows  that  she  is  helpless  and  elegant.  All 
these  instances,  heterogeneous  as  they  are,  have  elements 
in  common  with  each  other  and  with  the  traditional 
work  of  our  colleges.  They  present  the  notion  that 
what  is  useful  is  vulgar,  that  useless  accomplishments 
define  a  closed  rank  of  superior  persons,  and  that  entrance 
into  that  rank  should  be  made  difficult.  However,  we 
live  in  a  day  and  a  country  where  these  notions  have  only 
a  feeble  footing.  Our  people  are  likely  to  turn  away 
with  a  smile  and  go  on  to  things  which  are  of  use  and 
importance,  and  no  elegance  of  rhetoric  and  poetry, 
devising  subtle  and  far-fetched  explanations  of  the  real 
utility  of  classical  accomplishments,  will  avail  to  hold 
them.  Such  I  take  to  be  the  significance  of  the  fact 
that  the  youth  do  not  appreciate  a  college  education  or 
feel  an  eager  desire  for  it  as  their  fathers  did.  I  have 
heard  it  argued  that  it  is  a  great  misfortune  that  the 
boys  should  be  contented  with  a  high-school  education 
and  should  not  care  to  go  to  college;  also  that  something 
should  be  done  to  persuade  them  to  seek  a  college  educa- 
tion. I  do  not  so  argue.  A  college  or  school  ought  to 
stand  oil  its  own  footing  as  a  blessing  to  anybody  who 
can  get  its  advantages,  and  its  advantages  ought  to  be 
so  obvious  and  specific  that  they  should  advertise  them- 
selves. If  a  college  does  not  offer  such  advantages  that 
anyone  who  can  may  gladly  seize  them,  then  the  young 
men  may  better  not  enter  it.  If  special  inducements 
are  necessary  to  persuade  men  to  go  to  college,  then  the 
condemnation  of  the  college  is  pronounced.  It  has  no 
reason  to  exist. 

It  is  no  doubt  true  that  a  classical  education  once 
gave  a  man  a  positive  and  measurable  advantage  in  the 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE   COUNTRY     359 

career  which  he  might  choose  in  Hfe.  At  a  time  when 
the  sciences  which  teach  us  to  know  the  world  in  which 
\»f3  Hve  were  still  in  their  infancy;  when  the  studies  by 
which  the  mind  is  trained  to  high,  strict,  and  fearless 
thinking  were  as  yet  undeveloped;  when  history  was 
still  only  a  record  of  curious  and  entertaining  incidents 
in  war  and  diplomacy;  when  modern  civil  institutions 
were  yet  in  many  respects  below  the  standard  of  the 
ancients,  and  still  on  the  same  military  basis;  when  no 
notion  of  law  had  yet  found  footing  in  the  conception 
of  society;  —  at  such  a  time  no  doubt  study  of  classical 
types  and  models  was  valuable;  ideas  were  obtained  from 
an  old  treasure-house  which  could  not  have  been  obtained 
from  the  experience  of  actual  life;  literary  culture  was 
the  only  possible  discipline;  grammar  stood  first  as  a 
training  in  thought  and  expression;  formal  logic  was  a 
practical  tool;  perhaps  even  introspective  metaphysics 
was  not  entirely  a  scholastic  and  dialectic  exercise.  In 
those  times  a  young  man  who  possessed  a  classical  edu- 
cation, with  a  few  touches  of  metaphysics  and  theology 
to  finish  it  off,  was  put  on  a  true  superiority  to  his  uned- 
ucated contemporaries  as  regarded  his  stock  of  ideas,  his 
powers  of  expression,  his  horizon  of  knowledge,  and  the 
general  liberality  of  his  attitude  towards  life.  He  felt 
this  his  whole  life  long.  It  made  him  earnestly  grateful 
to  the  institution  which  had  educated  him.  Every  young 
man  who  grew  up  saw  distinctly  the  superior  advantages 
which  a  college  man  possessed,  and,  if  he  felt  at  all  fit  for  it, 
was  eager  to  win  the  same  advantage.  There  certainly 
never  has  been,  in  the  United  States,  any  appreciation 
of  the  rose-water  arguments  about  "culture"  which  are 
now  put  forward  in  defense  of  classical  training.  We, 
when  we  were  boys,  sought  classical  training  because  it 
was  the  training  which  then  put  the  key  of  life  in  our 


360     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

hands,  and  because  we  saw  positive  and  specific  advan- 
tages which  we  could  obtain  by  it. 

At  the  present  time  all  is  altered,  and  the  changes 
which  have  come  about  have  made  necessary  a  great 
change  in  the  character  of  our  colleges,  in  their  courses 
of  study,  and  in  their  whole  attitude  towards  the  public. 
I  do  not  say  that  they  need  to  come  into  direct  and  close 
relations  with  the  life  of  the  nation  to-day:  I  say  that 
they  must  take  heed  to  themselves  lest  they  fall  out  of 
that  intimate  relation  to  the  life  of  the  nation  in  which 
they  once  stood,  and  out  of  which  they  have  no  importance 
or  value  at  all.  A  college  which  is  a  refuge  for  mere 
jf  academicians,  threshing  over  the  straw  of  a  dead  learning, 
is  no  better  than  a  monastery.  Men  who  believe  that 
they  can  meet  the  great  interests  of  mankind  which  to-day 
demand  satisfaction,  by  a  complacent  reference  to  what 
satisfied  them  when  they  were  young,  are  simply  building 
for  themselves  a  fool's  paradise. 

It  must  be  said  here  that  college  officers  are,  for  many 
reasons,  unfit  for  college  management.  They  are  ex- 
posed to  all  the  pitfalls  of  every  pedagogue.  They  have 
to  guard  themselves  against  the  vices  of  dogmatism, 
pedantry,  hatred  of  contradiction,  conceit,  and  love  of 
authority.  They,  of  course,  come  each  to  love  his  own 
pursuit  beyond  anything  else  on  earth.  Each  thinks 
that  a  man  who  is  ignorant  of  his  specialty  is  a  barbarian. 
As  a  man  goes  on  in  life  under  this  discipline  he  becomes 
more  self-satisfied  and  egotistical.  He  has  little  contact 
with  active  life;  gets  few  knocks;  is  rarely  forced  into 
a  fight  or  into  a  problem  of  diplomacy;  gets  to  hate 
care  or  interruption,  and  loves  routine.  Men  of  this 
P'  type,  of  course,  are  timid,  and  even  those  traits  which 
are  most  admirable  in  the  teacher  become  vices  in  the 
executive  officer.     Such  men  are  always  over -fond  of  o* 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY     361 

priori  reasoning  and  fall  helpless  the  moment  they  have 
to  face  a  practical  undertaking.  They  have  the  whole 
philosophy  of  heaven  and  earth  reduced,  measured  out, 
and  done  up  in  powders,  to  be  prescribed  at  need.  They 
know  just  what  ought  to  be  studied,  in  what  amount  and 
succession  of  doses.  That  is  to  say,  they  are  prepared 
to  do  any  amount  of  mischief  at  a  juncture  when  the 
broadest  statesmanship  is  needed  to  guide  the  develop- 
ment of  a  great  institution.  Certainly  the  notion  that 
any  body  of  men  can  now  regulate  the  studies  of  youth 
by  what  was  good  for  themselves  twenty,  forty,  or  sixty 
years  ago  is  one  which  is  calculated  to  ruin  any  institu- 
tion which  they  control.  It  is  always  a  hard  test  of  the 
stuff  men  are  made  of  when  they  are  asked  to  admit 
that  a  subject  of  which  they  have  had  control  would 
profit  by  being  taken  out  of  their  control  and  intrusted 
to  liberty. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  system  of  heterogeneous  and 
nondescript  electives,  jumbled  together  without  coordi- 
nation of  any  kind,  and  offered  to  the  choice  of  lazy 
youth,  can  never  command  the  confidence  of  sober 
teachers.  A  university  ought  to  teach  everything  which 
anybody  wants  to  know.  Such  is  the  old  idea  of  a  uni- 
versity —  a  universe  of  letters.  It  ought  to  give  com- 
plete liberty  in  the  choice  of  a  line  or  department  of 
study,  but  it  ought  to  prescribe  rigidly  what  studies 
must  be  pursued  in  the  chosen  department  by  anyone 
who  wants  its  degree.  A  Yale  diploma  ought  not  to 
mean  that  a  man  knows  everything,  for  that  would  be 
absurd;  nor  that  he  knows  "something  about  the  general 
principles"  of  all  those  things  which  "every  educated 
man  ought  to  know,"  for  this  is  a  formula  for  super- 
ficiality and  false  pretence.  It  ought  to  mean  that  he 
has  acquired  knowledge  in  some  one  line  of  study,  suflS- 


362     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

cient  to  entitle  him  to  be  enrolled  amongst  the  graduates 
of  the  institution,  and  the  college  ought  to  define  strictly 
the  kind  and  quantity  of  attainment  which  it  considers 
sufficient,  in  that  line  or  department,  to  earn  its 
degree. 

Now,  however,  the  advocates  of  the  old  classical  cul- 
ture, ignoring  or  ignorant  of  all  the  change  which  has 
come  over  human  knowledge  and  philosophy  within 
fifty  years,  come  forward  to  affirm  that  that  culture 
still  is  the  best  possible  training  for  our  young  men  and 
the  proper  basis  for  the  work  of  our  colleges.  How  do 
they  know  it?  How  can  anybody  say  that  one  thing 
or  another  is  just  what  is  needed  for  education?  Can 
we  not  break  down  this  false  and  stupid  notion  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  a  university,  not  to  teach  whatever  any- 
one wants  to  know,  but  to  prescribe  to  everybody  what 
he  ought  to  want  to  know?  Some  years  ago,  at  a  school 
meeting  in  one  of  our  cities,  a  gentleman  made  an  argu- 
ment against  the  classics.  A  distinguished  clergyman 
asked  him  across  the  room  whether  he  had  ever  studied 
the  classics.  He  replied  that  he  had  not.  "I  thought 
not,"  replied  the  clergyman,  as  he  sat  down.  He  was 
thought  to  have  won  a  great  victory,  but  he  had  not. 
His  opponent  should  have  asked  him  whether  he  had 
ever  studied  anything  else.  Where  is  the  man  who  has 
studied  beyond  the  range  of  the  classical  culture  who 
retains  his  reverence  for  that  culture  as  superior  to  all 
other  for  the  basis  of  education?  No  doubt  a  man  of 
classical  training  often  looks  back  with  pleasure  and 
gratitude  to  his  own  education  and  feels  that  it  has  been 
of  value  to  him;  but  when  he  draws  an  inference,  either 
that  no  other  course  of  discipline  would  have  been  worth 
more  to  himself,  or  that  no  other  discipline  can  be  gener- 
ally more  useful  as  a  basis  of  education,  he  forms  a  judg- 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE   COUNTRY     363 

ment  on  a  comparison  one  branch  of  which  is  to  him 
unknown. 

I  am  not  in  the  same  position  on  this  question  as 
that  held  by  certain  other  writers  of  the  day.  I  may 
say  that  I  profited  fairly  by  a  classical  education.  I 
believe  that  I  am  in  a  position  to  form  a  judgment  as 
to  how  much  is  truth  and  how  much  is  humbug  in  the 
rhapsodies  about  the  classics  to  which  we  are  treated. 
The  historical  sciences  and  language  will  always  have 
great  value  for  certain  classes  of  scholars.  Clergymen 
will  always  need  the  ancient  languages  as  a  part  of  their 
professional  training.  Teachers  in  certain  departments 
will  always  need  them.  No  professor  of  modern  lan- 
guages could  be  considered  equipped  for  his  work  if  he 
were  unacquainted  with  Greek  and  Latin.  Philologists 
and  special  students  in  the  science  of  language  contribute 
in  a  high  degree  and  in  an  indispensable  manner  to  the 
stock  of  our  knowledge.  Literary  men  and  some  kinds 
of  journalists,  classes  who  are  sure  in  the  future  to 
seek  a  more  special  and  detailed  training  than  they  have 
enjoyed  in  the  past,  will  find  utility  in  classical  study. 
All  these  classes  need,  not  less  Greek  and  Latin  than 
hitherto,  but  more.  One  evil  result  of  trying  to  force 
the  classics  on  everybody  is  that  those  for  whom  the 
classics  have  value  cannot  get  as  much  of  them  as  they 
need.  Of  modern  languages,  two  at  least  are  to-day 
indispensable  to  an  educated  man.  As  nations  come 
nearer  to  each  other,  and  as  their  literatures  grow  richer 
and  richer,  the  need  of  being  able  to  step  over  the  barrier 
of  language  becomes  greater.  It  is  easy  for  anyone  who 
watches  the  course  of  things  to  see  how,  from  one  decade 
to  another,  the  necessity  of  learning  the  modern  lan- 
guages makes  itself  more  distinctly  felt.  Those  languages 
were  formerly  accomplishments.     Now  they  are  necessities 


364     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

for  anyone  who  intends  to  pursue  literary  or  scientific 
work,  or  even  practical  work  in  many  departments. 
Hence  language  will  always  enter  into  the  scope  of  edu- 
cation, especially  in  its  elementary  stages.  Latin  has 
especial  utility  and  advantage.  If  one  wanted  to  learn 
three  or  four  modern  languages,  it  might  pay  him  to 
learn  Latin  first,  and  Latin  will  always  have  value  for 
an  introduction  to  the  ancient  classical  world.  Greek 
is  a  rich  and  valuable  accomplishment  to  any  man  of 
literary  or  philological  tastes,  or  to  an  orator  or  public 
debater,  or  to  anyone  who  needs  the  art  of  interpreta- 
tion. I  know  of  no  study  which  will  in  general  develop 
gifts  of  expression,  or  chasten  literary  style,  like  the  study 
of  Greek.  That  language  more  than  any  other  teaches 
the  delicate  power  of  turns  in  the  phrase,  of  the  colloca- 
tion of  words,  of  emphasis,  of  subtle  shading  in  synonyms 
and  adjectives.  Then,  too,  surely  no  student  of  politics 
and  political  economy  can  pass  over  the  subject-matter 
of  Aristotle,  or  Demosthenes  and  the  orators,  nor  the 
life  and  polity  of  the  Greek  State. 

When,  however,  all  this  is  admitted  in  regard  to  the 
uses  of  a  classical  training,  what  does  it  prove  in  regard 
to  the  claims  of  the  classics  to  be  made  the  basis  of  all 
higher  education  or  the  toll  which  everyone  must  pay 
before  he  can  be  admitted  to  the  gild  of  the  learned  .^^ 
Nothing  at  all.  I  have  known  splendid  Greek  scholars 
who  could  not  construct  a  clear  and  intelligible  argu- 
ment of  six  sentences.  They  always  became  entangled 
in  subtleties  of  phrase  and  super-refinement  of  words.  I 
have  known  other  great  Greek  scholars  who  \\Tote  an 
English  which  was  so  dull  that  scarcely  anyone  could 
read  it.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  men  whose  names 
are  household  words  wherever  the  English  language  is 
spoken  because  they  can  say  what  they  mean  in  clear. 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE   COUNTRY     365 

direct,  and  limpid  English,  although  they  have  never  had 
any  classical  culture  at  all.  I  have  known  whole  classes 
to  graduate  at  our  colleges  who  had  never  read  a  line 
of  Aristotle,  and  who  had  not  a  single  correct  notion 
about  the  life  and  polity  of  the  Greeks.  Men  graduate 
now  all  the  time  who  know  nothing  of  Greek  history  and 
polity  but  the  fragments  which  they  pick  out  of  the 
notes  on  the  authors  which  they  read.  It  is  grotesque  to 
talk  about  the  recondite  charms  and  graces  of  classical 
culture  when  one  knows  what  it  amounts  to  for  all  but 
here  and  there  one.  It  is  a  rare  thing  for  a  man  to  grad- 
uate who  has  read  Grote  or  Curtius,  although  he  has 
studied  Greek  for  five  or  six  years.  Anyone  who  reads  no 
Greek  and  never  goes  to  college,  but  reads  Grote  or 
Curtius,  knows  far  more  of  Greek  life,  polity,  and  culture 
than  any  but  the  most  exceptional  college  graduate.  I 
do  not  believe  that  this  was  formerly  true.  It  appears 
that  faithful  students  in  former  times  used  such  means 
as  then  existed  for  becoming  familiar  with  classical  life 
and  history  far  more  diligently  than  is  now  customary. 
Classical  studies,  having  sunk  to  a  perfunctory  character, 
now  stand  in  the  way  of  faithful  study  of  anything. 

I  go  further,  and  if  the  classics  are  still  proposed  as 
the  stem  of  a  liberal  education,  to  be  imposed  upon  every 
student  who  seeks  a  university  training,  I  argue  that 
classical  culture  has  distinct  and  mischievous  limitations. 
The  same  may  no  doubt  be  said  of  any  other  special 
culture,  and  whenever  any  other  culture  is  put  forward 
as  possessing  some  exclusive  or  paramount  value,  it  will 
be  in  order  to  show  that  fact.  I  do  not  doubt  that  I 
gained  great  profit  from  a  classical  training.  Part  of 
the  profit  I  was  conscious  of.  I  think  it  very  likely  that 
I  won  other  profit  of  which  I  was  unconscious.  I  know 
that  it  cost  me  years  of  discipline  to  overcome  the  limita- 


366     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

tions  of  the  classical  training  and  to  emancipate  my  mind 
from  the  limited  range  of  processes  in  which  it  had  been 
trained.  For  the  last  ten  years  I  have  taught  political 
economy  to  young  men  of  twenty-one  years  or  there- 
abouts who  had  been  prepared  for  me  by  training  in 
a  curriculum  based  on  classics.  They  have  acquired 
certain  facilities.  They  have  a  facility  in  "recitation" 
which  is  not  always  produced  by  familiarity  with  the 
subject.  The  art  of  recitation  is  an  art  all  by  itself. 
Very  often  it  is  all  a  man  has  won  from  his  college  train- 
ing. Sometimes  it  consists  in  beating  out  a  little  very 
thin,  so  as  to  make  it  go  a  great  way;  sometimes  it 
consists  in  "going  on  one's  general  information,"  and 
profiting  to  the  utmost  by  any  hint  in  the  question; 
sometimes  it  consists  in  talking  rapidly  about  something 
else  than  the  question.  Some  men  never  can  come  to  a 
point,  but  soar  in  lofty  circles  around  and  over  the  point, 
showing  that  they  have  seen  it  from  a  distance;  others 
present  rags  and  tags  of  ideas  and  phrases,  showing  that 
they  have  read  the  text  and  that  here  and  there  a  word 
has  stuck  in  the  memory  without  sequence  or  relation. 
The  habit  of  reading  classics  with  a  "pony"  for  years 
has  produced  these  results.  Many  of  these  men  must 
be  regarded  with  pity  because  their  mental  powers  have 
been  miseducated  for  years,  and  when  they  try  to  acquire 
something,  to  make  it  their  own,  to  turn  it  into  a  concise 
and  correct  statement  and  utter  it  again,  they  cannot 
do  it.  They  have  only  acquired  some  tricks  of  speech 
and  memory. 

The  case  of  men  who  have  studied  honestly,  but  who 
have  been  educated  almost  exclusively  on  grammar,  is 
different.  No  doubt  they  have  gained  a  great  deal, 
but  I  find  that  they  hardly  ever  know  what  a  "law" 
is  in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  word.     They  think  that 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY     367 

it  is  like  a  rule  in  grammar,  and  they  are  quite  prepared 
to  find  it  followed  by  a  list  of  exceptions.  They  very 
often  lack  vigor  and  force  in  thinking.  They  either 
accept  authority  too  submissively,  if  the  notion  which 
is  presented  does  not  clash  with  any  notions  they  had 
received  before,  or  if  they  argue,  they  do  so  on  points  of 
dialectical  ingenuity.  They  do  not  join  issue  closely 
and  directly,  and  things  do  not  fall  into  order  and  range 
in  their  minds.  They  seem  to  be  quite  contented  to 
take  things  and  hold  them  in  a  jumble.  It  is  rare  to 
find  one  who  has  scholarship  enough  to  look  up  a  his- 
torical or  biographical  reference.  It  is  generally  assumed 
by  them  that  if  "no  lesson  has  been  given  out"  they  have 
nothing  to  do.  One  of  the  most  peculiar  notions  is  that 
a  "lecture"  has  no  such  importance  as  a  "recitation"; 
that  to  cut  the  former  is  of  no  consequence,  but  that  to 
cut  the  latter  is  serious.  In  short,  the  habits  and  tradi- 
tions in  which  men  have  been  trained  when  they  reach 
senior  year  in  college  are  such  that  they  are  yet  boys 
in  responsibility,  and,  although  they  are  very  manly  and 
independent  in  many  respects,  they  are  dependent  and 
unmanly  in  their  methods  of  study,  in  their  conceptions 
of  duty,  in  their  scholarship,  and  in  their  code  of  conduct 
in  all  that  effects  the  institution.  It  has  been  claimed 
for  the  classics  that  they  give  guidance  for  conduct. 
This  is,  to  me,  the  most  amazing  claim  of  all,  for,  in  my 
experience  and  observation,  the  most  marked  fact  about 
classical  culture  is  that  it  gives  no  guidance  in  conduct 
at  all. 

In  contrast  with  what  I  have  stated,  it  is  most  important 
to  notice  that,  in  every  class,  men  distinguish  themselves 
in  political  economy  who  have  been  very  poor  scholars 
in  the  classics  and  have  lost  whatever  mental  drill  a 
classical  training  might  have  given. 


368     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

I  shall  be  asked  whether  I  attribute  the  facts  which  I 
have  mentioned  about  the  mental  habits  of  students  to 
the  study  of  the  classics.  Evidently  many  of  them  are 
attributable  to  a  system  of  school  discipline  continued 
until  a  too  advanced  age,  and  to  a  puerile  system  of 
discipline.  Others  are  due  to  a  text-book  and  reci- 
tation-with-marks  system  which  breeds  into  a  man 
unscholarly  ideas  and  methods.  But  I  affirm  from  my 
own  experience  and  observation  that  the  most  serious 
of  the  mental  faults  and  bad  intellectual  habits  which  I 
have  described  are  caused  by  a  training  which  is  essen- 
tially literary,  grammatical,  and  metaphysical.  No  doubt 
it  is  true  that  a  large  fraction  of  the  men  will  shirk  work; 
that  they  are  slovenly  in  all  their  mental  habits;  that  they 
will  be  as  idle  as  they  dare;  that  they  seize  gladly  upon  a 
chance  to  blame  somebody  else  or  "the  system"  for  their 
own  shortcomings.  These  facts,  how^ever,  belong  only 
to  the  imperfection  of ,  all  things  earthly.  They  are 
true;  but  if  they  are  put  forward  as  an  excuse  for  routine 
and  neglect  on  the  part  of  university  authorities,  then 
those  authorities  simply  lower  themselves  to  the  level 
of  the  bad  students.  A  rigid  discipline  in  prescribed 
tasks,  with  especial  care  for  the  dull  scholars,  is  in  place 
for  youth  up  to  a  certain  age,  but  in  any  good  system 
of  education  the  point  must  be  judiciously  chosen  at 
which  this  system  shall  yield  to  a  system  of  individual 
responsibility.  The  point  at  which  this  change  should 
be  made  is  certainly  some  years  before  the  point  at  which 
young  men  become  men  by  the  laws  of  their  country. 
That  more  responsibility  would  bring  out  more  character 
is  beyond  question.  The  present  method  of  prolonging 
tutelage  and  inculcating  character  by  big  doses  of  "moral 
science"  is  certainly  a  failure.  I  maintain  that  it  is  an 
impertinence   for   any   authority   whatever   to  withhold 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE   COUNTRY     869 

from  young  men  twenty  years  of  age  anything  which 
they  desire  to  learn,  or  to  impose  upon  them  anything 
whatever  which  the  authority  in  question  thinks  they 
ought  to  know. 

The  tendency  of  classical  studies  is  to  exalt  authority, 
and  to  inculcate  reverence  for  what  is  written  rather 
than  for  what  is  true.  Men  educated  on  classics  are 
apt  to  be  caught  by  the  literary  form,  if  it  is  attractive. 
They  are  fond  of  paradoxes,  and  will  entertain  two  con- 
tradictory ideas,  if  only  each  come  in  a  striking  literary 
dress.  They  think  that  they  prove  something  when  they 
quote  somebody  who  has  once  said  it.  If  anyone  wants 
to  keep  out  "new  ideas,"  he  does  well  to  cling  to  classical 
studies.  They  are  the  greatest  barrier  to  new  ideas  and 
the  chief  bulwark  of  modern  obscurantism.  The  new 
sciences  have  produced  in  their  votaries  an  unquenchable 
thirst  and  affection  for  what  is  true  in  fact,  word,  character, 
and  motive.  They  have  taught  us  to  appreciate  and 
weigh  evidence  and  to  deal  honestly  with  it.  Here  a 
strong  contrast  with  classical  training  has  been  developed, 
not  because  classical  training  led  men  to  be  false,  but 
because  the  scientific  love  of  truth  is  something  new  and 
intense.  Men  of  classical  training  rarely  develop  the 
power  to  go  through  from  beginning  to  end  of  a  course 
of  reasoning  on  a  straight  line.  They  go  on  until  they 
see  that  they  are  coming  out  at  a  result  which  they  do 
not  like.  Then  they  make  a  bend  and  aim  for  a  result 
which  they  do  like,  not  regarding  the  broken  continuity, 
or  smoothing  it  over  as  carefully  as  possible.  Classical 
training,  in  the  world  of  to-day,  gives  a  man  a  limited 
horizon.  There  is  far  more  beyond  it  than  within  it. 
He  is  taught  to  believe  that  he  has  sounded  the  depths 
of  human  knowledge  when  he  knows  nothing  about  its 
range  or  amount.     If  anyone  wants  to  find  prime  speci- 


370     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

mens  of  the  Philistinism  which  Matthew  Arnold  hates, 
he  should  seek  them  among  the  votaries  of  the  culture 
which  Matthew  Arnold  loves.  The  popular  acuteness 
long  ago  perceived  this,  and  the  vile  doctrines  of  anti- 
culture  have  sprung  up  and  grown  just  in  proportion  as 
culture  has  come  to  have  an  artificial  and  technical 
definition,  as  something  foreign  to  living  interests. 

An  American  college  ought  to  be  the  seat  of  all  the 
learning  which  would  be  of  value  to  an  American  man  in 
the  American  life  of  to-day.  It  ought  to  offer  that  train- 
ing which  would  draw  out  and  discipline  the  mental 
powers  which  are  to-day  useful.  It  ought  to  offer  to 
its  pupils  an  opportunity  of  becoming  acquainted  with 
all  which  is,  or  is  coming  to  be,  in  the  great  world  of 
thought,  and  it  ought  to  offer  such  opportunities  that 
those  who  profited  by  them  faithfully  would  be  highly 
trained  men,  drilled  and  disciplined  for  any  of  the  tasks 
of  life.  If  a  college  were  such  a  place  as  this,  its  useful- 
ness would  be  recognized  at  once.  Every  young  man  in 
the  country  would  desire,  if  possible,  to  enjoy  its  advan- 
tages, because  he  would  feel  that,  if  he  could  get  a  college 
education,  he  would  be  as  it  were  lifted  upon  a  higher 
plane  for  all  the  work  of  his  subsequent  life,  no  matter 
what  career  he  might  choose.  His  ambition  would  have 
won  a  new  footing.  In  the  competition  of  life  he  would 
have  won  new  skill  and  new  weapons.  No  college  can 
possibly  take  any  such  place  if  it  "clings  to  the  classics." 
In  face  of  the  facts  it  is  ludicrous  to  talk  about  main- 
taining the  old  classical  culture.  We  might  as  well 
talk  of  wearing  armor  or  studying  alchemy.  During 
the  last  fifty  years  all  the  old  sciences  have  been  recon- 
structed and  a  score  of  new  ones  have  been  born.  Shall 
a  man  be  educated  now  at  our  highest  seats  of  learning 
and  not  become  acquainted  with  these  facts  and  doctrines 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY     371 

which  are  revolutionizing  the  world  of  knowledge?  Shall 
he  only  be  allowed  a  bit  here  and  a  fragment  there,  or 
spend  his  best  years  in  pursuits  which  end  in  themselves? 
In  every  journal  or  conversation,  and  in  many  sermons, 
topics  are  treated  which  belong  to  the  substance  of 
modern  thinking.  Shall  the  colleges  ignore  these 
topics,  or  only  refer  to  them  in  order  to  preach  them 
down? 

History  does  not  any  longer  mean  what  it  meant 
twenty  years  ago.  As  a  disciplinary  pursuit  it  has 
changed  entirely  from  any  exercise  of  memory  to  an 
analysis  and  investigation  of  relations  and  sequences. 
Constitutional  history  has  grown  into  a  great  branch 
of  study  of  the  highest  importance  to  the  student  of 
law,  political  science,  jurisprudence,  and  sociology.  It 
has  totally  altered  the  point  of  view  and  mode  of  con- 
ceiving of  those  subjects  since  the  days  when  the  study 
of  them  began  with  the  classical  authors.  The  years 
spent  on  Greek  grammar  and  literature  would  be  price- 
less to  the  whole  mass  of  our  youth  if  they  could  be  spent 
on  this  study.  Sociology  is  still  in  its  infancy.  Only 
its  most  elementary  notions  are,  as  yet,  available  for 
purposes  of  education.  It  is  sure  to  grow  into  a  great 
science,  and  one  of  the  first  in  rank  as  regards  utility  to 
the  human  race.  It  is  plain  that  progress  in  other  direc- 
tions is  producing  problems  in  society  which  we  cannot 
meet  because  our  social  science  is  not  proportionately 
advanced.  Biology  is  a  science  which  is  still  young  and 
new,  but,  with  its  aflSliated  sciences,  it  holds  the  key 
to  a  number  of  our  most  important  problems  and  to  a 
new  philosophy  destined  to  supersede  the  rubbish  of 
the  schools.  Physics  in  all  its  subdivisions,  dynamics, 
anthropology,  archaeology,  and  a  host  of  other  sciences, 
with  new  developments  in  mathematics,  ofiFer  just  the 


372     ESSAYS  OF  WILLIAM  GRAHAM  SUMNER 

stimulus  which  is  proper  and  necessary  to  draw  out 
youthful  energies  and  to  awaken  youthful  enthusiasm. 
The  studies  which  I  have  mentioned  and  others  are  ready 
at  our  hand  to-day  to  give  our  young  men  intellectual 
training  and  high  scholarship  and  to  carry  them  on  to 
heights  of  enjoyment  and  useful  activity  of  which  they 
have  no  conception.  In  the  mean  time  they  are  studying 
Latin  and  Greek,  and  the  college  authorities  are  boasting 
that  they  cling  to  the  old  curriculum  and  to  classical 
culture. 

Our  colleges  cannot  maintain  themselves  in  any  such 
position  before  the  country.  They  must  have  the  best 
possible  learning,  and  they  must  impart  it  freely.  They 
cannot  do  this  if  they  "run  themselves"  or  live  on  their 
reputation.  There  is  nothing  else  which  now  calls  for 
such  high  statesmanship  as  the  guidance  of  our  old  col- 
leges into  the  new  duties  and  functions  which  they  ought 
to  fulfill.  It  is  a  task  which  calls  for  great  sagacity  and 
good  judgment,  but  above  all,  for  constant  study  and 
care.  There  is  here  one  remarkable  consideration  by 
way  of  encouragement.  A  great  university  can  be  sub- 
jected to  experiments  without  any  harm  at  all.  It  is 
a  great  mistake  to  think  that  an  experiment,  if  it  fails, 
will  leave  permanent  evils  behind.  It  will  not  do  so. 
Every  academic  year  stands  by  itself.  Every  year  it  is 
possible  to  begin  anew,  adopting  a  new  plan  or  recurring 
to  an  old  one,  and  no  harm  at  all  is  done.  No  one  pro- 
poses to  do  away  with  the  study  of  the  classics.  For 
those  who  desire  to  pursue  that  study  we  desire  far  fuller 
opportunities  than  now  exist.  The  assault  is  aimed 
entirely  at  the  pre-eminent  and  privileged  position  which 
is  claimed  for  the  classics.  We  desire  that  the  univer- 
sities should  offer  equal  chances  for  a  liberal  education 
on  the  basis  of  any  of  the  other  great  lines  of  study.     If 


OUR  COLLEGES  BEFORE  THE  COUNTRY     373 

it  should  prove,  upon  experiment,  that  men  educated 
in  other  sciences  could  not  hold  their  own  in  life  in 
competition  with  the  classically  educated,  there  would 
undoubtedly  be  a  revival  of  classical  study  and  a  return 
to  it  by  those  who  were  seeking  an  education. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGEAPHY 

1872  The  Books  of  the  Kings,  by  K.  C.  W.  F.  Bahr.  Trans- 
lated, Enlarged,  and  Edited.  .  .  .  Book  2,  by  W.  G. 
Sumner,  in  Lange,  J.  P.  A  commentary  on  the  Holy 
Scripture.  .  .  .  New  York,  Scribner,  Armstrong  & 
Company,  1866-82,  26  vols.,  VI,  312  pp. 

1874  A  History  of  American  Currency.    New  York,  H.  Holt 

&  Company,  iv,  391  pp.,  two  fold  diagram. 

1875  American  Finance.     Boston,  Williams. 

1876  Monetary   Development.     (In   Woolsey,  T.  D.,  and 

others,  First  Century  of  the  Republic.  New  York, 
Harper  &  Brothers.) 

Politics  in  America,  1776  to  1876.  North  American 
Review,  Vol.  122,  Centennial  number,  pp.  47-87. 

1877  Lectures   on   the   History   of   Protection   in   the 

United  States.  .  .  .  New  York,  published  for  the 
New  York  Free  Trade  Club  by  G.  P.  Putnam  &  Sons, 
64  pp.  Contents:  The  National  Idea  and  the  Ameri- 
can System,  Broad  Principles  Underlying  the  Tariff 
Controversy,  The  Origin  of  Protection  in  this  Country, 
The  Establishment  of  Protection  in  this  Country, 
Vacillation  of  the  Protective  Policy  in  this  Country. 

1878  Earle,    a.    L.     Our    Revenue    System.     Preface    by 

W.  G.  Sumner.      New  York,  published  for  the  Free 
Trade  Club  by  G.   P.  Putnam  &  Sons,  2  p.  L.,  xi, 
47  pp.     (Economic  Monograph  No.  V.) 
Money  and  its  Laws.     International  Review,  January 
and  February  pp.  75-81. 

1879  Bimetallism.     Princeton  Review,  November,  pp.  546- 

578. 

[377] 


378  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1880  The    Theory    and    Practice    of    Elections.     Ibid.y 

March,  pp.  262-286,  and  July,  pp.  24-41. 

1881  Elections  and  Civil  Service  Reform.     Ibid.y  January, 

pp.  129-148. 

1881  The    Argument  Against    Protective   Taxes.    Ibid., 

March,  pp.  241-259. 
Sociology.     Ibid.,  November,  pp.  303-323. 

1882  Andrew  Jackson  as  a   Public   Man.     Boston,   New 

York,  Houghton   Mifflin    &   Company,     vi,   402  pp. 

(American  Statesmen).     Edited  by  T.  T.  Morse,  Jr. 
Wages.     Princeton  Review,  November,  pp.  241-262. 
Protective  Taxes  and    Wages.      Philadelphia    Tariff 

Commission,  21  pp.     Caption  title. 
Political  Economy  and  Political  Science.     Comp. 

by  W.  G.  Sumner,  D.  A.  Wells,  W:  E.  Foster,  R.  L. 

Dugdale,  and  G.  H.  Putnam.     New  York  Society  for 

Political  Education.     Cover  title,  36  pp.     Economic 

Tracts  No.  2. 

1883  What  the  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other.    New 

York,  Harper  &  Bros.,  2  p.  I.,  (7)-169  pp. 

1884  Our  Colleges  Before  the  Country.     Princeton  Re- 

view, March,  pp.  127-140. 
Problems  in  Political  Economy.     New  York,  12mo., 

125  pp. 
Sociological    Fallacies.     North    American    Review, 

June,  pp.  574-579. 

1885  Shall  Silver  be  Demonetized?    Ibid.,  June,  pp.  485- 

489. 
Collected  Essays  in  Political  and  Social  Science. 

New  York,  173  pp. 
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1886  Industrial  War.    Forum,  September,  pp.  1-8. 

Mr.  Blaine  on  the  Tariff.     North  American  Review, 
October,  pp.  398-405. 

1887  What  Makes  the  Rich  Richer  and  the  Poor  Poorer? 

Popular  Science  Monthly,  January,  pp.  289-296. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  379 

1887  The  Indians  in  1887.    Forum,  May,  pp.  254-262. 
State  Interference.  North  American  Review,  August, 

pp.  109-119. 

1888  Trusts    and    Trade    Unions.     The  Independent,  V. 

40,  pp.  482-483. 

1888  The  Fall  in  Silver  and   International   Competi- 

tion.    Rand  MeNally*s  Banker's  Monthly,  February, 
pp.  47-48. 
The  First  Steps  Towards  a  Millennium.    Cosmo- 
poHtan,  March,  pp.  32-36. 

1889  Do  We   Want   Industrial   Peace?     Forum,  Decem- 

ber, pp.  406-416. 
What  is  Civil  Liberty?     Popular   Science   Monthly, 
July,  pp.  289-303. 

1890  Alexander  Hamilton  ("Makers   of  America").     New 

York,  12mo.,  280  pp.,  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co. 

1891  LiBERTE  DES  EcHANGES.     Nouvcau  Dictionuairc  d'Eco- 

nomie  Politique,  vol.  2,  pp.  138-166,  Guillaumin   et 
Cie  Paris. 
The  Financier  and  the  Finances  of  the  American 
Revolution.     New  York,  2  vol.,  8mo.,  309  and  330  pp. 

1892  Robert  Morris  (''Makers  of  America").     New  York, 

12mo.,  172  pp. 
1894  Absurd  Effort  to  Make  the  World  Over.      Forum, 
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1896  Banks  of  Issue  in  the  United  States.    Forum,  V.  22, 

pp.  182-191. 
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1898  The    Coin   Shilling  of  Massachusetts   Bat.     Yale 

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1899  The  Conquest  of  the  United  States  by  Spain.      Yale 

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